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The Daily

The Long Road Home for Gazans

The Daily

The New York Times

Daily News, News

4.4102.8K Ratings

🗓️ 30 October 2025

⏱️ 43 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Earlier this month, after Israel and Hamas reached a cease-fire agreement, the Israeli military said it would withdraw from parts of Gaza — allowing some Palestinians displaced to the south to try to return home to the north. Rachelle Bonja, a producer of “The Daily,” ​recently spoke by phone with three Gazans​ who were making or contemplating the journey home. ​One of them, Saher ​Alghorra​, is a photojournalist ​who often works with The Times; another is Nidal Kuhail​, ​a former restaurant worker ​whom The Times has spoken to over the course of the war. The third is Hussein Khaled Auda​, a former bodybuilder who ran a small gym in Jabalia. Mr. Auda’s story is about his family. His four young children were killed in airstrikes during the war, and his wife was seriously injured. He has been traveling back home in large part to find and bury the remains of two of his children, who had been in the rubble of his house after one of the airstrikes. We interviewed his wife, Rawa, and other relatives, and reviewed death certificates and video footage to help understand what happened to his family. In our reporting, The Times also learned that a cousin of Mr. Auda’s was a senior leader of Hamas in Gaza who was killed during the war last year. The Times asked Mr. Auda if he himself had any ties to Hamas. He said he was not a member of Hamas and not political, and had dozens of cousins. He said he had seen the one affiliated with Hamas just a couple of times in his life. Like other news organizations, The Times has not yet been able to send its own staff journalists into Gaza unescorted. This episode, like many other Times pieces for more than two years, seeks to help our audience understand the experiences of Gazans during a devastating war.

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0

I want to ask you because I know that you were one of the people that actually went back today.

0:14.5

So I was wondering if you could tell me a little bit more about your journey.

0:19.3

I wonder if you could tell me a little bit more about your journey. I wonder if you could tell me that story.

0:27.0

Every house, every section, everything looked different.

0:31.6

Everything had changed on the way.

0:33.9

And it was a strange feeling.

0:36.7

We had this strange feeling that this place that we had known

0:40.6

it was different from the way that we'd remembered it.

0:46.0

Can you describe what looked different?

0:48.9

Yeah, it's a question asher on me if you asked me and said me,

0:53.1

what is the thing that didn't have a question than what you're so can you make the question easier by telling me what actually stayed the same because this question is too hard to the New York Times, I'm Rachel Abrams, and this is the Daily.

1:26.6

Earlier this month, after Israel and Hamas reached a ceasefire agreement, the Israeli military

1:32.3

said it would pull back from certain areas of Gaza.

1:36.3

This meant that some Palestinians, who'd been displaced to the south, could try to return

1:41.3

home to the north.

1:48.8

Foreign journalists still aren't allowed inside Gaza.

1:52.3

Okay, so I'm going to speak to him in Arabic first.

1:55.2

I'm going to explain the whole setup, and then I will start speaking in English.

1:59.5

So Daily producer Rochelle Bonja spoke with Gazans by phone.

2:15.4

And followed them on their journeys north, along a seaside road and through parts of Gaza that have been devastated by two years of war as they tried to return home.

2:18.9

You're going back to your house.

2:19.7

It's destroyed.

...

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