Palestinians use wood and stones to rebuild houses

With tents collapsing and winter nearing, ordinary Gazans are forced to improvise

- Ezz Al Din Abu Eisha

With a hammer in one hand and a stone in the other, Khalil makes a resolution: “I can’t wait around for promises of reconstruction.”

He climbs up the cracked stairs to his ruined apartment, which is now uninhabitable. Despite this, he still feels that what remains of his house is a small homeland to which he wants to return.

Khalil lives in Gaza City, where Israel carried out the devastating Operation Gideon's Chariots II in the weeks leading up to the ceasefire. The Israeli army left behind it such terrible destruction that it was as if an earth-shattering quake had hit.

Israeli forces had used military robots rigged with explosives to blow up buildings, causing widespread damage to infrastructure and facilities.

When the Israeli army withdrew from the centres of the Gaza Strip's cities to the yellow line agreed upon in the peace plan, Khalil immediately returned to check on his house.

He was shocked by what he found: the building's foundations had been stripped of cement, meaning that the residential structure was at risk of collapse. Looking at the columns, he was overcome with deep sorrow, but he quickly remembered that he was living in a worn-out, impractical tent pitched on the street.

The staircase had been hit by artillery fire and was cracked and broken. He struggled to climb the stairs to reach his apartment, only to find what remained was "nothing but concrete pillars". Speaking to Independent Arabia, he recounted: "All the walls had collapsed as a result of the explosions. Despite this, I resolved to rebuild everything traditionally and live there again. Even in its ruined state, my home is better than living in a classroom or in a tattered tent out on the street."