Struggle and Solidarity: Writing Toward Palestinian Liberation

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Inside a rented house in the Saraya area, west of Gaza City, 50-year-old Rami Karaja sat talking about a home he can no longer reach and documents he can no longer retrieve.

At the end of April 2025, Karaja’s home in the Shuja’iyya neighborhood was bombed. Among the many things his family lost are the property deeds to the house, which are still buried beneath the rubble.

“I cannot return to my home to retrieve the documents because the house is in an area under Israeli control,” Karaja said. “The papers proving my ownership remain beneath the rubble of the destroyed house.”

Amid widespread destruction of housing across Gaza, Karaja is not alone. According to a UN report released in February 2026, at least 92 percent of housing units in Gaza were estimated to have been destroyed or damaged between October 2023 and October 2025, while more than 90 percent of the population was displaced during the same period.

“I don’t know when I will be able to return, what the place will look like when I do, or how I will prove my ownership if I begin rebuilding my home,” Karaja said.

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Karaja fears that determining the boundaries of his home and land will be difficult after both the loss of his documents and so much destruction to the property.

“If the Israeli forces leave Shuja’iyya and I return to my home and begin rebuilding, I will face a problem because I no longer have the property documents with me,” he said.

He says the destruction of so many homes has made it more difficult to determine land boundaries, and he fears this could eventually lead to disputes between families.

But his concerns go beyond the documents themselves.

Karaja’s home is located in a so-called “red zone,” which Palestinians cannot freely access. As Israel deepens and expands its control over these parts of Gaza, Palestinians like Karaja continue to be denied access to their land.

For families who have lost both their homes and property documents, the fear is not simply about losing a piece of paper. It is about losing the ability to establish a legal connection to their land at a time when they cannot even reach it.

These fears have grown as Israel has expanded the areas under its control and deepened restrictions on movement and access within Gaza.

Karaja worries that that temporary military control could become a long-term reality.

“What frightens me most is that my home could be turned into an Israeli settlement,” he said.

A 2026 Gaza Strip Rapid Damage and Needs Assessment, prepared by the World Bank, the United Nations, and the European Union, found that the destruction of land........

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