Abdel Qader Sabbah
and Sharif Abdel Kouddous
Oct 11, 2025

GAZA CITY—Nizar Daghmash, the 56-year-old head of the Daghmash family council, stood in front of the ruins of his family home in Gaza City on Friday after making the journey back to the north following a ceasefire that went to effect earlier that day at 12 p.m. His house was still standing but only barely—more of a broken concrete shell surrounded by rubble.

“As you can see, the scene speaks for itself,” Daghmash told Drop Site. “The stone, as a stone, has no material value to us. But the emotional value—these stones, we placed them one by one, me, my father, my brothers, and my sisters. A flood of memories runs through my mind now—not about the stones or the house itself, but because this house represents our history.”

Tens of thousands of displaced Palestinians returned to the north on Friday, making their way along Al-Rashid road. Like Daghmash, many had fled Gaza City following Israel’s brutal military offensive on the city that began in mid-August in a stated campaign of ethnic cleansing. They returned to find many of their neighborhoods unrecognizable.