We Tried to Attain Gazans We Interviewed Over Two Years of Warfare. Right here’s What Occurred to Them.

When we spoke last summer to Samar al-Jaja and her nephews, Mohammed, Mahmoud, Ahmed and Abdullah Akeila, it had been 10 months since the brothers’ parents and baby sister had been killed in an airstrike.

Under their tent at a charity camp, they still held out hope that they would see their parents when they were allowed to go home to Gaza City.

But when they got home earlier this year, only their parents’ bedroom was still standing.

There was no one inside. The five of them stood there, numb.

“The kids said sadly, ‘We wish we were buried with them,’” Ms. al-Jaja, 32, said when we contacted her again recently.

They have never been able to mourn properly. The sweets that people in Gaza traditionally distribute on the anniversary of a death were too expensive to make, given the wartime price of flour and sugar.

They couldn’t even say a prayer at their parents’ graves. They do not know where they are.

“Even that closure has been taken from us,” she said.

She spoke to us from a half-destroyed building in Gaza City where she and her nephews were sheltering.

Days later, Israeli forces stormed the city, the latest operation in the two-year campaign against Hamas in Gaza, which began after the militant group’s deadly Oct. 7, 2023, attack on Israel.

Negotiators from Israel and Hamas began holding talks in Cairo on Monday about a possible swap of Israeli hostages in Gaza for Palestinians in Israeli prisons. If they agree, the war could be one step closer to ending.

But as they wait to hear what will happen to them, Palestinians in Gaza must keep trying to survive.

Ms. al-Jaja and her nephews moved to another neighborhood to escape the offensive in Gaza City, then fled south. They paid nearly $4,000 to a truck driver to load half their belongings — it was “pay or risk death,” the driver told them, Ms. al-Jaja said.

After a 14-hour journey, they ended up back in the same charity camp they were living in last year. This time, they have no tent.

Almost everyone we spoke to has been displaced from homes or shelters multiple times. Many have no home to return to.

Last October, when we wrote about Hammam Malaka and his wife, Najia Malaka, they had been separated for almost the entire war.

They had gotten stuck less than 20 miles apart after Israeli troops cut off northern Gaza from southern Gaza.

He was trapped in the south with Yamen, 6, and Sandy, 4. She was in the north with Seela, 3, Ashraf, the baby, and Mohammed, their newborn.

When we spoke to Mr. Malaka again recently, he said they had finally managed to reunite in January, during the brief cease-fire.

He told us how they found each other at what had been the border between north and south Gaza: “I switched on the flashlight of my old Nokia phone and began shouting into the dark — ‘Ashraf! Mohammed!’ — hoping she could hear me and find me more easily,” he said.

Then he saw her. “I ran and hugged her and our children with everything in me,” he said.

But their 3-year-old, Seela, was not there. She had been killed while they were apart.

After reuniting, the family returned home to Gaza City, but then were forced to flee south again.

Since Israel broke the cease-fire in March, their days have been spent in a perpetual struggle against hunger and danger, which Mr. Malaka said were like “endless waves crashing over us.”

Without work, he said, he has taken the risk of grabbing supplies from passing aid trucks or lining up at aid distribution points.

Hundreds of Palestinians have been killed searching for something to eat, according to aid officials.

Many people we spoke to told us about hunger: suffering from malnutrition, losing significant weight or going days at a time without food, even as they tried desperately to find it.