'I'm 89 and I saw my homeland rebuilt before - but now I don't believe Gaza has a future'

October 19, 2025

'I'm 89 and I saw my homeland rebuilt before - but now I don't believe Gaza has a future'

"I rode away on a camel with my grandmother, along a sandy road, and I started to cry." Ayish Younis is describing the worst moment of his life – he still regards it as such, even though it was 77 years ago, and he's lived through many horrors since.

It was 1948, the first Arab-Israeli war was raging, and Ayish was 12. He and his whole extended family were fleeing their homes in the village of Barbara - famed for its grapes, wheat, corn and barley - in what had been British-ruled Palestine.

"We were scared for our lives," Ayish says. "On our own, we had no means to fight the Jews, so we all started to leave."

The camel took Ayish and his grandmother seven miles south from Barbara, to an area held by Egypt that would become known as the Gaza Strip. It was just 25 miles long and a few miles wide, and had just become occupied by Egyptian forces.

In all an estimated 700,000 Palestinians lost their homes and became refugees as a result of the war of 1948-49; around 200,000 are believed to have crowded into that tiny coastal corridor.

"We had bits of wood which we propped against the walls of a building to make a shelter," Ayish says.

Later, they moved into one of the huge tented camps established by the United Nations.

Today, aged 89, Ayish is again living in a tent in Al-Mawasi near Khan Younis.