After brief return home, a family in Gaza is forced by war to flee again

GAZA CITY, Gaza Strip (AP) — The Abu Jarad family is homeless once again. For the 10th time during Israel’s 19-month campaign in Gaza, they have been forced to flee, and the latest uprooting was the most painful of all.

In January, during a ceasefire, Ne’man Abu Jarad, his wife and six daughters had a joyous return to their home in northern Gaza. They hoped it might be the end of their ordeal after more than a year of escaping Israeli offensives by traversing the length of the Gaza Strip and back.

Weeks later, bombs started falling again. They tried to hold out, but the Abu Jarads eventually abandoned their home a second time.

“Each time you take this decision to leave, it’s like you’re executing yourself by your own hand,” Ne'man said. He spoke in Gaza City, where he and his brothers had set up tents for their families in the rubble-strewn yard of a destroyed apartment building.

The Associated Press has tracked the Abu Jarad family's journey across a territory where nearly the entire population of some 2.3 million Palestinians has been driven from their homes by the war. Like the Abu Jarads, most have moved multiple times.

The latest wave of forced displacement across the territory accelerated after Israel broke the two-month ceasefire on March 18 and resumed its military campaign.

At least 430,000 people have been on the move since then, and more are certain to follow as the Israeli military issues evacuation orders covering greater territory in an accelerating assault. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said last Wednesday that Israel intends to force the population into the far south of Gaza.

This time, the displacement is unfurling under the threat of famine. Israel blocked all food, fuel, medicine and other aid from entering Gaza starting March 2, pushing hundreds of thousands close to starvation. It said the blockade and its resumed military campaign aim to force Hamas to disarm and release the 58 hostages it holds. The past week, Israel let in a trickle of supplies, but aid groups say it is far short of what is needed.

Ne'man and his wife, Majida, were visibly gaunter than in January, when AP last spoke to them. Like others, they have struggled to feed their family. Their daughters range from age 6 to the eldest in her 20s, married and with a baby born just before the war began.

“When one of my daughters tells me, ‘Baba, I want to eat,’ I give her one or two bites so her piece of bread lasts till the end of the day,” Ne’man said.

It was only days into the war when the Abu Jarads first left their home in the far north of Gaza, as Israel began fierce bombardment in retaliation for Hamas’ Oct. 7, 2023, attack on southern Israel. They returned 15 months later, among hundreds of thousands of Palestinians streaming north on foot during the January ceasefire.

“Our happiness … was like we were entering Paradise,” Ne’man said.

The house was damaged but still standing. Most of their belongings had been stolen or were under rubble. But after months of living in tents, they had a sense of home and privacy again, he said. They did some repairs. Ne'man, whose garden was his passion before the war, revived some of his flowers.

On March 18, Israel resumed its campaign with one of the heaviest nights of bombardment of the war, hitting across Gaza and killing some 400 people. The military told residents of northern Gaza to leave.

“We said, let’s just be patient for a bit, maybe the situation will improve,” Majida said.

They didn’t want to undergo the pain of displacement again, Ne’man said. His daughters were crying, telling him, ‘We want to die in this house, this time we’re not leaving,’” he said.

But the shelling and gunfire was intense all around them, he said. The water trucks stopped delivering because it was too dangerous. “When you find death all around you … at that point I was forced to take the decision,” he said.

They packed up some belongings and went to a piece of land owned by his relatives in an area called Manshiya on the outskirts of the town of Beit Lahiya, only about a mile away.

They felt safe. Ne’man’s uncle’s house was nearby and other relatives were in tents around them.

But again the bombardment caught up to them. Last week, Israeli forces began barraging Manshiya – the heaviest Ne’man said he had experienced in the whole war.

They huddled in their tent for three days and nights, afraid to leave even to go to the bathroom. At one point, a drone struck only 20 meters (yards) away.

Another strike hit his uncle’s home, killing one of his cousins. “It was so dangerous, we couldn’t even go help him,” Ne’man said. The cousin’s family buried him on the spot, he said.

Others around them fled, but again the Abu Jarads tried to stay as long as they could.

“I was conflicted between two fires, should I leave or stay,” Majida said. Some of their daughters wanted to stay; the younger ones were terrified and wanted to go, she said.

Ne’man and his son-in-law went to Gaza City to scout out where to move. They found a place that seemed promising – an empty lot next to a demolished apartment building. They returned to Manshiya and on Sunday, the family set out.

They walked for miles, each of them weighed down with backpacks and plastic sacks filled with clothes and other belongings. At the edge of Gaza City, they found a pickup truck to take them the rest of the way.

They arrived after sunset, too late to set up their tents. A family in an intact apartment building was kind enough to take them in for the night, Ne’man said.

Ne’man’s brothers joined with their families. It took them three days to clear a lot of rubble and wreckage, smooth down the earth, pound tent pegs into the ground and erect seven tents for all of them. Majida and her daughters lay mattresses on the ground inside and arranged their things around them.

The men dug a pit by the edge of the lot for all the families to use as a toilet.

Then they sat for their meal of the day. Majida made a broth of boiled water, some tomato sauce and a little bit of bulghur wheat, then she mashed shreds of stale bread into it.

Now they face an unknown future.

His daughters are depressed and see little hope, he said. Wherever they move, there is still Israeli bombardment. All they can do is try to flee death, over and over, Ne'man said.

“We want the torrents of blood to stop," he said. “But this is our nation, our land. Even if it is soaked in our blood, we won’t leave it.”

Keath reported from Cairo.

Ne'man Abu Jarad sets up a new tent for his family after they were displaced by the Israeli air and ground offensive in the Gaza Strip in Gaza City, Monday, May 19, 2025. (AP Photo/Jehad Alshrafi)

Tents fill a makeshift camp in Gaza City, where members of the Abu Jarad family and other Palestinians displaced by Israeli bombardment are sheltering, Monday, May 19, 2025. (AP Photo/Jehad Alshrafi)

Members of the Abu Jarad family, who were displaced by the Israeli air and ground offensive in the Gaza Strip, fill containers with water in Gaza City, Tuesday, May 20, 2025. (AP Photo/Jehad Alshrafi)

Members of the Abu Jarad family, who were displaced by the Israeli air and ground offensive in the Gaza Strip, eat in a tent where they are sheltering in Gaza City, Tuesday, May 20, 2025. (AP Photo/Jehad Alshrafi)

Members of the Abu Jarad family, who were displaced by the Israeli air and ground offensive in the Gaza Strip, build a new tent in Gaza City, Monday, May 19, 2025. (AP Photo/Jehad Alshrafi)

DUBAI, United Arab Emirates (AP) — Widening protests in Iran sparked by the Islamic Republic's ailing economy are putting new pressure on its theocracy.

Tehran is still reeling from a 12-day war launched by Israel in June that saw the United States bomb nuclear sites in Iran. Economic pressure, which has intensified since September when the United Nations reimposed sanctions on the country over its atomic program, has put Iran's rial currency into a free fall, now trading at some 1.4 million to $1.

Meanwhile, Iran's self-described “Axis of Resistance” — a coalition of countries and militant groups backed by Tehran — has been decimated in the years since the start of the Israel-Hamas war in 2023.

A threat by U.S. President Donald Trump warning Iran that if Tehran “violently kills peaceful protesters” the U.S. “will come to their rescue," has taken on new meaning after American troops captured Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro, a longtime ally of Tehran.

“We're watching it very closely,” Trump told journalists aboard Air Force One late Sunday. “If they start killing people like they have in the past, I think they're going to get hit very hard by the United States.”

Here's what to know about the protests and the challenges facing Iran's government.

Demonstrations have reached over 220 locations in 26 of Iran’s 31 provinces, the U.S.-based Human Rights Activists News Agency reported early Monday. The death toll had reached at least 19 killed, it added, with more than 990 arrests. The group, which relies on an activist network inside of Iran for its reporting, has been accurate in past unrest.

Understanding the scale of the protests has been difficult. Iranian state media has provided little information about the demonstrations. Online videos offer only brief, shaky glimpses of people in the streets or the sound of gunfire. Journalists in general in Iran also face limits on reporting such as requiring permission to travel around the country, as well as the threat of harassment or arrest by authorities.

But the protests do not appear to be stopping, even after Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei on Saturday said “rioters must be put in their place.”

The collapse of the rial has led to a widening economic crisis in Iran. Prices are up on meat, rice and other staples of the Iranian dinner table. The nation has been struggling with an annual inflation rate of some 40%.

In December, Iran introduced a new pricing tier for its nationally subsidized gasoline, raising the price of some of the world’s cheapest gas and further pressuring the population. Tehran may seek steeper price increases in the future, as the government now will review prices every three months.

The protests began first with merchants in Tehran before spreading. While initially focused on economic issues, the demonstrations soon saw protesters chanting anti-government statements as well. Anger has been simmering over the years, particularly after the 2022 death of 22-year-old Mahsa Amini in police custody that triggered nationwide demonstrations.

Iran's “Axis of Resistance," which grew in prominence in the years after the 2003 U.S.-led invasion and subsequent occupation of Iraq, is reeling.

Israel has crushed Hamas in the devastating war in the Gaza Strip. Hezbollah, the Shiite militant group in Lebanon, has seen its top leadership killed by Israel and has been struggling since. A lightning offensive in December 2024 overthrew Iran’s longtime stalwart ally and client in Syria, President Bashar Assad, after years of war there. Yemen's Iranian-backed Houthi rebels also have been pounded by Israeli and U.S. airstrikes.

China meanwhile has remained a major buyer of Iranian crude oil, but hasn't provided overt military support. Neither has Russia, which has relied on Iranian drones in its war on Ukraine.

Iran has insisted for decades that its nuclear program is peaceful. However, its officials have increasingly threatened to pursue a nuclear weapon. Iran had been enriching uranium to near weapons-grade levels prior to the U.S. attack in June, making it the only country in the world without a nuclear weapons program to do so.

Tehran also increasingly cut back its cooperation with the International Atomic Energy Agency, the U.N.'s nuclear watchdog, as tensions increased over its nuclear program in recent years. The IAEA's director-general has warned Iran could build as many as 10 nuclear bombs, should it decide to weaponize its program.

U.S. intelligence agencies have assessed that Iran has yet to begin a weapons program, but has “undertaken activities that better position it to produce a nuclear device, if it chooses to do so.”

Iran recently said it was no longer enriching uranium at any site in the country, trying to signal to the West that it remains open to potential negotiations over its atomic program to ease sanctions. But there's been no significant talks in the months since the June war.

Iran decades ago was one of the United States’ top allies in the Mideast under Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, who purchased American military weapons and allowed CIA technicians to run secret listening posts monitoring the neighboring Soviet Union. The CIA fomented a 1953 coup that cemented the shah’s rule.

But in January 1979, the shah, fatally ill with cancer, fled Iran as mass demonstrations swelled against his rule. Then came the Islamic Revolution led by Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, which created Iran’s theocratic government.

Later that year, university students overran the U.S. Embassy in Tehran, seeking the shah’s extradition and sparking the 444-day hostage crisis that saw diplomatic relations between Iran and the U.S. severed.

During the Iran-Iraq war of the 1980s, the U.S. backed Saddam Hussein. During that conflict, the U.S. launched a one-day assault that crippled Iran at sea as part of the so-called “Tanker War,” and later shot down an Iranian commercial airliner that the U.S. military said it mistook for a warplane.

Iran and the U.S. have seesawed between enmity and grudging diplomacy in the years since, and relations peaked with the 2015 nuclear deal, which saw Iran greatly limit its program in exchange for the lifting of sanctions. But Trump unilaterally withdrew America from the accord in 2018, sparking tensions in the Mideast that intensified after Hamas' Oct. 7, 2023, attack on Israel.

FILE - An Iranian security official in protective clothing walks through part of the Uranium Conversion Facility just outside the Iranian city of Isfahan, on March 30, 2005. (AP Photo/Vahid Salemi, File)

FILE - A customer shops at a supermarket at a shopping mall in northern Tehran, on Sept. 28, 2025. (AP Photo/Vahid Salemi, File)

FILE - Current and pre-revolution Iranian banknotes are displayed by a street money exchanger at Ferdowsi square, Tehran's go-to venue for foreign currency exchange, in downtown Tehran, Iran, on Aug. 28, 2025. (AP Photo/Vahid Salemi, File)

FILE - People cross the Enqelab-e-Eslami (Islamic Revolution) street in Tehran, Iran, on Sept. 27, 2025. (AP Photo/Vahid Salemi, File)

FILE - Protesters march on a bridge in Tehran, Iran, on Dec. 29, 2025. (Fars News Agency via AP, File)

People wave national flags during a ceremony commemorating the death anniversary of the late commander of the Iran's Revolutionary Guard expeditionary Quds Force, Gen. Qassem Soleimani, who was killed in a U.S. drone attack in 2020 in Iraq, at the Imam Khomeini grand mosque in Tehran, Iran, Thursday, Jan. 1, 2026. (AP Photo/Vahid Salemi)