Abdel Mahdi al-Wuheidi was born in 1940 in Bir al-Saba, the largest town of the Naqab, where his family lived on their land among their livestock. He remembers the arguments among the families when word came that Haganah forces were approaching — some wanting to leave, others insisting on staying — and the decision to walk west to Gaza and wait a few weeks. “We all left … We walked for days. We would rest, then continue walking,” he says. “We never imagined it would become a permanent exile.” The family settled first in Gaza City’s Zeitoun quarter and then in Jabalia camp: tents that flooded in winter, hunger, queues for food and water, shared latrines, lice.

He worked for years in construction inside Israel during the period when Palestinian labourers were given permits, and with his brothers built houses and bought land. The war that began in October 2023 destroyed all of it. Eighty-five years old, he and his wife Aziza leaned on each other to walk when Israeli forces cleared the UN school where they had sheltered; they were displaced repeatedly, to western Gaza City and to Deir el-Balah. “When a person leaves his home, he loses his dignity and worth,” he says. After the October 2025 ceasefire he returned to Jabalia, where he has twice fallen trying to cross the rubble with his cane. He gave this account to Al Jazeera in May 2026, sitting beside a small fire in the ruins of the house, brewing coffee.

Sources

• From the Nakba to Gaza’s ruins: One man’s lifetime of displacement — Al Jazeera, 16 May 2026