Jabalia, Gaza – Inside his partially destroyed home in the Jabalia refugee camp in northern Gaza, 85-year-old Abdel Mahdi al-Wuheidi sits beside a small fire brewing coffee, staring at what remains of a life, now surrounded by rubble.

Next to him sits his wife, Aziza, also in her 80s, whom he married six decades ago. Despite years of trying, the couple was never able to have children.

Today, they live together with the five sons of Abdel Mahdi’s late brother. They were children when their father died, and Abdel Mahdi raised them and helped them to marry and start families of their own.

Born in 1940, Abdel Mahdi was only a child when the 1948 Nakba – the mass expulsion of 750,000 Palestinians from their home at the founding of the state of Israel – unfolded. And yet, despite living through that pain and trauma, he says that what Palestinians are enduring today, brought on by Israel’s genocidal war on Gaza, surpasses anything he has ever witnessed.

“We are from Bir al-Saba [Beersheba] … that was our homeland,” he says in a tired voice. Bir al-Saba is the largest city in the Naqab Desert. It was captured by Israeli forces in 1948, forcing much of its Palestinian population out.

The original Nakba

Abdel Mahdi’s sharp memory carries him back to his childhood, living with his parents on their land, among their livestock and property – a normal life, before everything changed.

Abdel Mahdi says he still remembers the heated discussions among families in Bir al-Saba when news first spread that Zionist Haganah militias were approaching, with some wanting to flee, and others insisting on staying.

The decision was eventually made to leave for Gaza, to the west, with the hope of returning in a few weeks.

And so Abdel Mahdi, along with his parents, three siblings, and the rest of his extended family, left, carrying whatever livestock, money and supplies they could manage.

“We all left … We walked for days. We would rest, then continue walking,” he says. “We carried some of our belongings with us. We never imagined it would become a permanent exile.”

The family initially settled in Gaza City’s Zeitoun neighbourhood before later moving to Jabalia refugee camp in northern Gaza, where the harsh realities of refugee life began.

“We lived in tents. The rain and wind would flood them, the cold was unbearable, then came the scorching heat,” he says. “There was hunger, exhaustion, long lines for food and water, shared toilets, lice, poor sanitation … painful memories.”

Right of return

“I remember my father and grandfather always saying we would return, and they told their children and grandchildren to hold on to the right of return,” Abdel Mahdi says.

But the return never came. Instead, decades of exile, wars and repeated attempts to rebuild life followed.

Abdel Mahdi worked for years inside Israel in construction, during a period when Palestinian labourers were granted work permits.

Together with his brothers, he managed to build homes and buy land, only for the current war to erase everything once again.

“We worked, built homes and bought land,” he says. “We thought we were finally compensating for something after the displacement that destroyed our families and lives. We thought it was over.”

“But this war destroyed everything completely,” he adds. “At the end of our lives, it brought us all back to zero. Nothing is left – no stone, no trees.”

Abdel Mahdi acknowledges that life in Gaza was never truly stable – with several Israeli wars and a years-long blockade – but he says the scale of destruction during the latest war is unprecedented.

“A Nakba at the beginning of my life … and another Nakba at the end of it. What can we even say?” he murmurs while staring at the devastation surrounding him.

The war on Gaza

Abdel Mahdi recounts how his life was turned upside down during the latest Israeli war on Gaza, beginning in October 2023.

This time, he was forced to flee his home as an elderly man, struggling to walk alongside his ageing wife and the families of his nephews.

He was displaced multiple times – once to the Gaza seaport area in western Gaza City, another time to Deir el-Balah in central Gaza.

Before that, he had sought shelter in a United Nations-run school in Jabalia before Israeli forces stormed it.

He recalls the terrifying moments when Israeli tanks and soldiers entered the school during the early months of the war, as chaos, gunfire and screams erupted while loudspeakers ordered everyone to evacuate southwards.

“They forced us out of the school,” he says. “My elderly wife and I leaned on each other to walk. Some people couldn’t get out and were killed there.”

“We walked long distances until we reached western Gaza, together with what remained of our family, who had scattered in different places,” he adds.

“We were collapsing from exhaustion, but the shelling and fear forced us to keep moving.”

Abdel Mahdi says that he considered staying in his home and refusing to leave, unwilling to repeat what he called “the mistake of our ancestors” when they fled in 1948. But he says the danger eventually forced him to flee.

For the elderly man, displacement itself became one of the cruellest parts of the war.

“When a person leaves his home, he loses his dignity and worth,” he says quietly. “We lived in tents, in the sand, exposed to everything… We lived through famine and shortages of absolutely everything.”

“I wished for death with all my heart,” the octogenarian admits, his eyes filling with tears. “All I wanted was a concrete wall to lean my exhausted back against, but there was nothing. It was unbearable for both the young and the old.”

A taste of return

A small sense of hope came when residents were allowed to return to northern Gaza after the October 2025 ceasefire announcement.

Abdel Mahdi says he had lost hope of ever seeing his home again, but he managed to return to it even though it was heavily damaged.

“A deep pain took hold of me when I saw Jabalia, where I had lived for decades, turned into endless rubble and destroyed roads,” he says.

“Now I walk with great difficulty, trying to make my way through shattered streets with my cane,” he adds, recalling that he has fallen twice while trying to walk through the rubble left behind by Israeli attacks.

Abdel Mahdi insists that what Palestinians are experiencing today bears no resemblance to any previous period of his life.

He has lived through the Nakba, the 1956 war, the 1967 war, the Palestinian uprisings, and previous wars on Gaza, yet says none compare to the current devastation.

“Back then, the Israelis withdrew from our lands,” he says. “Today, more than half of Gaza’s land has been seized … every day we hear gunfire and Israeli military vehicles.

“Even the end of the war they talked about was a lie,” he adds. “We have been living in an ongoing catastrophe for three years.”

Watching events unfold, Abdel Mahdi expresses deep disappointment with the Arab and international response to Gaza, saying Palestinians have long been left alone to face war, hunger and siege.

“History is repeating itself,” he says. “We were abandoned at every stage and left alone against a ruthless military machine. We endured more than human beings can bear.”

That reality, he says, is also what prevents him from feeling hopeful that conditions in Gaza will improve any time soon.

“We hear endless promises about opening crossings and improving conditions,” he says. “But it is all lies … promises that stole years from our lives and souls.”

Yet despite the repeated displacement, loss and wars, Abdel Mahdi clings fiercely to the one thing he says the war could not take from him: his connection to the land.

“Even if they offered me a palace in New York in exchange for this destroyed house, I would refuse,” he says firmly.

What he is living through now, however painful, has not pushed him towards leaving. Instead, he says, it has only deepened his determination to remain.

“Those who left long ago never came back,” he says. “A person should never abandon his homeland. Here I will die, and here I will be buried.”