Gazanes face difficult decisions since their future is debated on the global stage

Jabalia, seen from the air, is impressive.

A moor similar to Hiroshima extends as far as he looks. The corpses shattered from buildings splatter the agitated landscape, some inclined at crazy angles.

The great wave waves of debris make it impossible to distinguish the geography of this refugee camp once bustling and well full.

And yet, when a drone camera flies on the remains, it chooses blue and white splashes where small tent camps have been installed in open field patches.

And figures, climbing over broken buildings, moving along the streets of land, where food markets are sprouting under tin roofs and canvas awnings. Children who use a collapsed roof like a slide.

After more than six weeks of the high fragile, Gaza’s fire, Jabralia slowly returns to life.

In the neighborhood of Al -qasasib, Nabil has returned to a four -story house that is still standing, even if it lacks windows, doors and, in some places, walls.

He and his relatives have made raw balconies with wooden and canvas pallets to avoid the elements.

“Look at the destruction,” he says as he examines the rule of javelia from a upper floor.

“They want us to go without rebuilding it? How can we go? The least we can do is rebuild it for our children.”

To cook a meal, Nabil lights a fire on the bare staircase, carefully with broken cardboard pieces.

On another floor, Laila Ahmed Okasha was washed in a sink where the tap dried up months.

“There is no water, electricity or wastewater,” she says. “If we need water, we have to go to a distant place to fill cubes.”

She says she cried when she returned home and found her shattered.

She blames Israel and Hamas for destroying the world she once met.

“Both are responsible,” she says. “We had a decent and comfortable life.”

Shortly after the war began in October 2023, Israel told the Palestinians in the northern part of the Gaza Strip, including wild boar, to move south by its own security.

Hundreds of thousands of people paid attention to warning, but many stayed, determined to get out of the war.

Laila and her husband Marwan clung until October last year, when the Israeli army reinforced Jabalia, saying that Hamas had reconstituted struggle units within the narrow streets of the camp.

After two months of refuge in the near Shati, Leila and Marwan camp they returned to find Jabalia almost unrecognizable.

“When we returned and saw how it was destroyed, I didn’t want to stay here anymore,” says Marwan.

“I had a wonderful life, but now it is hell. If I have the opportunity to leave, I will leave. I will not stay one more minute.”

Stay or leave? The future of the civilian population of Gaza is now subject to international debate.

In February, Donald Trump suggested that the United States should take care of Gaza and that almost two million Palestinian residents should leave, possibly forever.

Given the international outrage and the fierce opposition of the Arab leaders, Trump appeared later to move away from the plan, saying that he recommended it, but would not force anyone.

Meanwhile, Egypt has led Arab efforts to create a viable alternative, which will be presented at an emergency Arab summit in Cairo on Tuesday.

Crucially, he says that the Palestinian population should remain within Gaza while rebuilding the area.

The intervention of Donald Trump has taken the famous stubborn from Gaza’s stubborn side.

“If Trump wants to make us leave, I’ll stay in Gaza,” says Laila. “I want to travel for my own will. I will not go for him.”

On the way is a yellow block of nine -story floors so spectacularly damaged that it is difficult to believe that it has not collapsed.

The upper floors have completely yielded, threatening the rest. Over time, it will surely have to be demolished, but for now it is the home of even more families. There are sheets in the windows and washing so that they dry at the end of the winter sun.

The most incongruous of everything, outside an improvised plastic door in a corner of the ground floor, next to lots of rubble and garbage, is a headless diet, with a wedding dress.

It is the Sanaa Abu Ishbak dress shop.

The 45 -year -old seamstress, a 11 -year -old mother, established the business two years before the war, but had to leave it when she fled south in November 2023.

She returned as soon as the fire was announced. With her husband and daughters, she has been busy cleaning the debris of the store, organizing dresses on hangers and preparing for business.

“I love the javelia camp,” she says, “and I will not leave it until he dies.”

Sanaa and Laila seem equally determined to stay if they can. But both women speak differently when they talk about young people.

“She doesn’t even know how to write her own name,” says Laila about her granddaughter.

“There is no education in Gaza.”

The girl’s mother was killed during the war. Laila says she still talks to her at night.

“She was the soul of my soul and left her daughter in my hands. If I have the opportunity to travel, I will do it for the sake of my granddaughter.”