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UN special rapporteur on right to housing says Palestinians returning to destroyed northern Gaza face \u2018profound trauma\u2019.<\/em><\/p>\n Published On 11 Oct 2025<\/span>11 Oct 2025<\/span><\/p>\n Click here to share on social media<\/p>\n share2<\/p>\n Israel must allow tents and caravans to immediately be delivered to the Gaza Strip, a United Nations expert says, as displaced Palestinians returning to the north of the bombarded territory have found their homes and neighbourhoods destroyed.<\/p>\n Balakrishnan Rajagopal, the UN special rapporteur on the right to adequate housing, said people are finding nothing but rubble in areas from which Israeli forces have withdrawn in northern Gaza.<\/p>\n list of 3 items<\/span>end of list<\/span><\/p>\n \u201cThe psychological impacts and trauma are profound, and that\u2019s what we are seeing right now as people are returning to northern Gaza,\u201d he told Al Jazeera in an interview on Saturday.<\/p>\n Tens of thousands of Palestinians have been streaming back into Gaza\u2019s north after Israeli forces pulled back on Friday as part of a ceasefire between Israel and Hamas to halt the two-year conflict.<\/p>\n Palestinians across the coastal enclave have welcomed the suspension of Israel\u2019s bombardment, which has killed more than 67,700 people since October 2023 and plunged Gaza into a humanitarian crisis.<\/p>\n The UN estimated that 92 percent of all residential buildings in Gaza have been damaged or destroyed since the war began, and hundreds of thousands of displaced Palestinians have been forced to live in tents and other makeshift shelters.<\/p>\n Rajagopal noted that tents and caravans were meant to be delivered to Gaza during a ceasefire early this year but \u201calmost none\u201d of them was allowed in due to Israel\u2019s strict blockade.<\/p>\n \u201cThat is really to me the crux of the issue right now. Even immediate relief and aid to the people of Gaza is not possible unless Israel stops controlling all the entry points. That is essential,\u201d the UN expert told Al Jazeera.<\/p>\n Rajagopal, who has used the term \u201cdomicide\u201d to describe the decimation of homes across the Strip, said the destruction of housing in Gaza has been a central component of Israel\u2019s genocide against Palestinians.<\/p>\n \u201cThe destruction of homes and clearing people from the area and making the area uninhabitable is one of the main ways in which the act of genocide has been committed,\u201d he said, adding that\u00a0the recovery process will ultimately take generations.<\/span><\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s like another Nakba,\u201d he said, referring to the ethnic cleansing of Palestine when Israel was created in 1948. \u201cWhat has happened in the last two years is going to be something similar.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" UN special rapporteur on right to housing says Palestinians returning to destroyed northern Gaza face \u2018profound trauma\u2019. Published On 11 Oct 202511 Oct 2025 Click here to share on social media share2 Share Israel must allow tents and caravans to immediately be delivered to the Gaza Strip, a United Nations expert says, as displaced Palestinians<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":27448,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[48],"tags":[267,105,1233,196,1758,16390,150,2943],"class_list":{"0":"post-27447","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-politics","8":"tag-conflict","9":"tag-expert","10":"tag-gaza","11":"tag-generations","12":"tag-israelpalestine","13":"tag-nakba","14":"tag-news","15":"tag-recovery"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27447","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=27447"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27447\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/27448"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=27447"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=27447"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=27447"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}Recommended Stories <\/h2>\n