Israel must allow tents and caravans to immediately be delivered to the Gaza Strip, a United Nations expert says, as displaced Palestinians returning to the north of the bombarded territory have found their homes and neighbourhoods destroyed.
Balakrishnan Rajagopal, the UN special rapporteur on the right to adequate housing, said people are finding nothing but rubble in areas from which Israeli forces have withdrawn in northern Gaza.
“The psychological impacts and trauma are profound, and that’s what we are seeing right now as people are returning to northern Gaza,” he told Al Jazeera in an interview on Saturday.
The UN estimated that 92 percent of all residential buildings in Gaza have been damaged or destroyed since the war began, and hundreds of thousands of displaced Palestinians have been forced to live in tents and other makeshift shelters.Tens of thousands of Palestinians have been streaming back into Gaza’s north after Israeli forces pulled back on Friday as part of a ceasefire between Israel and Hamas to halt the two-year conflict.
Palestinians across the coastal enclave have welcomed the suspension of Israel’s bombardment, which has killed more than 67,700 people since October 2023 and plunged Gaza into a humanitarian crisis.
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