Grapevine

All that’s left is a key: Palestinians fleeing Israel’s bombs dream of home

Deir el-Balah, Gaza – A year of war, displacement and horror has not made the people of Gaza forget the homes they had to leave behind to save their families from relentless Israeli bombing.

Al Jazeera spoke to three women who are now living in a refugee camp near Al-Aqsa Hospital in Deir el-Balah. They fled with their families, but held on to the one object that unifies all Palestinians deprived of their homes and lands: the keys to their houses.

No longer the large iron keys that their forebears took with them when they were ethnically cleansed in the Nakba of 1948, these small, modern keys are just as important to a dispossessed people as ever.

Abeer

Abeer al-Salibi, 37, lives in the crowded Deir el-Balah displacement camp and still carries the key to her house, though it now lies in ruins.