Returning to Gaza: A Harrowing and Uncertain Ordeal

Gaza Returnees Face Ruined Homes and Harsh Israeli Interrogations

The group of nations that President Trump convened today says it plans to implement Trump's 20-point ceasefire plan in Gaza. One of those points states, quote, "no one will be forced to leave Gaza, and those who wish to leave will be free to do so and free to return." But as NPR's Anas Baba reports from Gaza, returning is a harrowing and uncertain ordeal.

Amina Osman's grandchildren are excited to have her back. The 55-year-old spent nearly two years in Egypt, where she was seeking health care. She was trapped outside Gaza that whole time and was dreaming to return, even in war. And she was finally able to do so this month because of a ceasefire brokered by President Trump that demanded Israel open Gaza's border with Egypt.

"It smelled like Gaza," says Osman. But after passing barbed wire and blast walls, it looked nothing like the Gaza she knew.

She says when the bus stopped near her home in southern Gaza, there was no home. The area has been razed to the ground. Osman is among four women NPR spoke with about their return to Gaza. The U.N. says less than 300 people have been allowed back into the territory since the Rafah crossing between Egypt and Gaza opened two weeks ago. Those who have returned describe a terrifying journey of Israeli checkpoints, militias and being questioned at every turn.

That's Hoda Abu Abed, a 57-year-old grandmother with a heart condition. She says entering Gaza felt like entering a prison. She says much of what she was carrying back was taken from her at the border crossing in Gaza by Palestinian Authority officials who are monitored by civilian border guards from the European Union.

Abu Abed says her medicine, a new mobile phone, headphones she had bought for her granddaughter, perfume, creams and even her water bottle were confiscated.

Others interviewed by NPR also confirmed that they were only allowed to bring one bag of clothes into Gaza. Toys were taken from children. When asked by NPR, the EU mission said the list of items authorized to enter Gaza are part of an agreement between Israel, Egypt and Palestinians. They did not, however, explain why eye drops and children toys were among the items taken. The women interviewed by NPR say after passing through the EU-monitored crossing, they were taken in a bus, escorted by two military jeeps, that was stopped by a Palestinian militia known as Abu Shabab. This militia is armed by Israel to fight Hamas.

Abu Abed says the militia's male and female recruits handed the Palestinian women on the bus over to the Israeli for interrogation at a military facility in southern Gaza. There, Abu Abed and her 31-year-old daughter, Rotana el-Rigib, say they were blindfolded, handcuffed and interrogated by masked Israeli soldiers about ties to Hamas. Here is el-Rigib, a mother of four, explaining.

She says she was asked who had pressured her to return to Gaza. She and others interviewed by NPR say the Israeli military also encouraged them to leave Gaza for good.

El-Rigib and others say the military didn't tell them a specific country they could go to, but told them there was no life in Gaza anymore. In a statement to NPR, the Israeli military denied any incidents of inappropriate conduct, mistreatment, apprehensions or confiscation of personal items at its screening facility in southern Gaza.

For Rigib, who was reunited with her four kids in Gaza after a year apart, nothing compares with the feeling of being home.

Even if home is a makeshift tent with no guarantee of what tomorrow may bring. Anas Baba, NPR News, Mawasi, Gaza. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.