Displaced Gazans return to face shattered homeland and uncertain future

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• Geoff Bennett:

  President Trump said today that he's in — quote — "no rush" to do anything in Gaza. Earlier this week, he talked about the need for Palestinians to leave Gaza, calling it a demolition zone, and for the U.S. to take over the area and develop it.

• Amna Nawaz:

  Meanwhile, Hamas is accusing Israel of delaying aid deliveries that were agreed to in the cease-fire deal, an accusation Israel denies.

  Stephanie Sy has this report with the latest.

• Stephanie Sy:

  Half-a-million families streaming back to their homes in Gaza on foot, on piggyback, children in tow, for more than a year, their home a battleground in the Israel-Hamas war. They survived, while many did not, but their apartments, their businesses, everything that makes a community are in ruins.

  Amidst the destruction, rescue workers and families dig, trying to locate the remains of loved ones. Bones are taken to the local morgue, in the hopes that they can be identified in the future. Nearly two million Gazans are still displaced, sheltering in makeshift tents while winter's bitter elements beat down upon them and temperatures drop.

  Kawkab Hamouda's tent housing her and her children collapsed in the strong winds.

• Kawkab Hamouda, Displaced Gazan (through interpreter):

  Something like an earthquake occurred and the wood collapsed on us. I have two children in the hospital. One of them had two stitches in his head, and the other was injured by this metal rod which fell on him.

• Stephanie Sy:

  She recalls a previous life of comfort and dignity long gone.

• Kawkab Hamouda (through interpreter):

  We are dying. We have no food. Look at the tent. I do not have money to buy them food. I was living decently and comfortably in the north. Who can I turn to now, to whom?

• Stephanie Sy:

  Nearly 91 percent of Gazans are projected to suffer from acute food insecurity this year. And according to U.N. estimates, over 60,000 children will need treatment for acute malnutrition in 2025.

  Gaza's residents have long relied on food assistance. Prior to the war, the U.N. was sending an average of 500 trucks of aid a day. During the war, those deliveries became scarce and sporadic.

  To make matters worse, armed looters have targeted aid trucks in hundreds of cases, further threatening the survival of Gaza's civilians. In one desperate scene, IDF soldiers began shooting into a crowd waiting for aid to be disbursed; 112 people were killed.

  Since the cease-fire began, thousands of trucks with food medicine and tents have arrived in Gaza, but the future of its residents may lie in the hands of politicians, diplomats and dealmakers far away.

  Speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives Mike Johnson and Israeli President Benjamin Netanyahu met in Washington today, days after President Donald Trump proposed to relocate all Gazans in Jordan and Egypt, a proposal which Johnson has backed as a logical move.

  The plan has been roundly rejected by those countries' leaders and the Palestinians themselves, who want to stay in their homeland, shattered as it is.

  For the "PBS News Hour," I'm Stephanie Sy.

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