DEIR AL-BALAH, Gaza Strip — Ne’man Abu Jarad sat on a tarp on the ground. Around him, canvas sheets hung from cords, forming walls for his tent. Over the past year, Ne’man; his wife, Majida; and their six daughters have trekked the Gaza Strip, trying to survive as Israeli forceswreaked destruction around them.
It’s a far cry from their northern Gaza home — a place of comforting routine, of affection and safety. A place where loved ones gathered on the roof amid the scent of roses and jasmine flowers.
“Your house is your homeland. Everything good in our life was the home,” Ne’man said. “We are missing all that.”
The family lost that stability when Israel launched its campaign in Gaza in retaliation for Hamas’ Oct. 7 attack.
They did exactly as the Israelis ordered in the weeks and months that followed. They obeyed evacuation calls, moving where the military told them to. Seven times, they fled. Each time, their lives became more unrecognizable to them.
The Associated Press traced the family’s journey. Nearly the entire population of Gaza has displaced in the war – 1.9 million of its 2.4 million Palestinians. Like the Abu Jarads, most have been uprooted multiple times.
For this family, the journey has taken them from a comfortable middle-class life to ruin.
Living at the northernmost end of Gaza, most pre-war days were simple. Ne’man worked as a taxi driver. Majida got their daughters off to school, then spent much of her day doing housework — her face lights up talking about her kitchen, the center of family life.
Ne’man had planted the garden with a grapevine and covered the roof with potted flowers. Watering them was a soothing ritual. Family and neighbors sat on the front stoop or the roof to chat.
“People would say we have perfume because of how beautiful the flowers are,” he said.
On Oct. 7, the family heard Hamas rockets and news of the attack. They knew Israel’s response would be swift — their house, about 2 kilometers (1.2 miles) from the border fence, would be on the front line.
By 9 a.m., the family packed what they could and fled, with Israel issuing one of its first evacuation orders.
“It makes no sense to be stubborn and stay,” Majida said.
The family tried to stay close — they went to Majida’s parents, in neighboring Beit Lahiya.
“I felt like I was at home,” Majida said. “But we were living in fear and terror.”
Already, Beit Lahiya was heavily bombarded. Over their six days there, at least nine Israeli strikes hit, killing dozens, according to conflict monitor Airwars.
As explosions closed in, shrapnel pierced the house’s water tanks. Windows shattered; the family huddled inside.
It was time to move again.
When they arrived at al-Quds hospital, the family saw for the first time the scale of displacement.
The building and its grounds were packed with thousands of people. They found a small space on the floor, barely enough to spread their blanket.
It was a black night and there were strikes, Majida remembers: “The martyrs and wounded were strewn on the floor.”
The next day, a strike hit a house a few hundred meters away, killing a doctor and some two dozen relatives.
The Israeli military ordered all civilians to leave northern Gaza, setting in motion a wave of hundreds of thousands heading south across Wadi Gaza, the stream and wetlands dividing the north from the rest of the strip.
The family joined the exodus. The eldest daughter, Balsam, and her baby joined her husband elsewhere. Majida, Ne’man, his sister and the kids headed south.
The family walked 10 kilometers (6 miles) to a U.N.-run school in the Nuseirat refugee camp.
Every classroom and corridor was packed. Majida, the daughters and Ne’man’s sister found a tiny space in a classroom already housing 100-plus women and children. Ne’man moved in with the men in tents outside.
They stayed more than 10 weeks. Majida and the girls slept curled on the floor, unable even to extend their legs. As winter set in, there weren’t enough blankets. Only a few toilets served thousands. People went weeks without bathing. Skin diseases ran rampant.
The daughters went daily to line up at the few bakeries still working, sometimes returning with only one flatbread. Once, Ne’man and his daughters walked 5 kilometers (3 miles) to the town of Deir al-Balah, looking for drinkable water. They got a half-gallon.
As strikes continued, the family decided to go as far as possible, trekking 20 kilometers (12 miles) to Rafah, at Gaza’s southernmost end.
The Abu Jarads weren’t the only ones: As Israeli evacuation orders ate away at more of Gaza, nearly half the population crammed into Rafah.
Here, the family had their first taste of living in a tent.
They set up amid the massive sprawl of tens of thousands of tents on Rafah’s outskirts, near U.N. aid warehouses known as “the barracks.”
“In the winter, it was hell,” Majida said. “We slept on the ground, nothing under us, and no covers.”
They had no money to buy food; market prices soared. They survived off U.N. handouts of flour and other basics.
Like many others, they’d believed Rafah was Gaza’s last safe place.
But in early May, Israel ordered all of Rafah evacuated. Troops pushed into the city. Bombardment intensified.
Ne’man and Majida tried to stay as long as possible. But an airstrike hit nearby, he said, killing four of Ne’man’s cousins and a young girl.
Palestinians who’d packed into Rafah — more than 1 million — streamed out again, scattering across southern and central Gaza. New tent cities filled beaches, fields, schoolyards, cemeteries, dumpsites, any open space.
The Abu Jarads moved by foot and donkey cart until they reached a former amusement park known as Asdaa City. Its Ferris wheel stood above a landscape of tents.
Here, in Muwasi, a barren area of dunes and fields along the coast, Israel had declared a “humanitarian zone” – though there was little aid, food or water.
Amenities once taken for granted were distant memories. Now the kitchen was a pile of sticks for kindling and two rocks for setting a pot over the fire. No shower, only the occasional bucket of water. Soap was too expensive. Everything was filthy and sandy. Insects crept in.
Even the “humanitarian zone” was unsafe. A raid less than a kilometer (half-mile) away forced Majida and Ne’man to uproot their family once more. They headed toward the Mediterranean coast, not knowing where they’d stay.
Fortunately, they said, they found acquaintances.
“God bless them, they opened their tent for us and let us live with them for 10 days,” Ne’man said.
When they returned to Muwasi, the Abu Jarads found their tent had been robbed – their food and clothes, all gone.
Since then, the weeks blur together. Food’s even harder to find; supplies entering Gaza dropped to their lowest levels.
Israeli drones buzz overhead. The mental strain wears on everyone.
They all dream of home. Ne’man said he learned that his brother’s house next door was destroyed in a strike, and his own home was damaged.
He wonders about his flowers. He hopes they survived — even if the house is gone.