TRANSCRIPT
As residents gradually return to northern Gaza, Palestinian Australian Shamikh Badra [[SHA-mi-k BA-dra]] has been thinking about his brother, who went missing in Gaza 12 months ago.
"My father passed away as a lack of medicine. And then when the neighbours tried to call my brother Ehab and his family in order to come to help them, to help the neighbours to bury my father, but Ehab didn't reply to them, After that my friend told me, I messaged you a brother hap many times your brother was seeing my message, but he didn't reply to me."
After reuniting with his youngest brother Majid [[MAH-gid] in Australia, the two siblings have been trying to find out where their brother was.
Now, as the northern Gaza reopened to its residents, Majid says they plan to travel there to see their mother, while searching for their brother.
"We are trying to travel to Gaza to help my mother and to search for my brother Ehab and his family for kids and his wife and his father-in-law. And if he's alive, we will be happy. I hope this would happen. And if he's not, we must bury their dead bodies in a respectful way."
From Monday [[January 27]], tens of thousands of displaced Palestinians returned to their home in northern Gaza, two days later than initially planned due to dispute delay.
Despite the joy of returning home, what awaits them are houses that now become inhabitable, with a shortage of basic supplies.
Nevertheless, many people - including those living in Australia - are desperate to head back to the Strip in search for their loved ones.
Mahmoud Kaskeen [[KAS-keen]] is one of them. His cousin had disappeared since the war began.
"He went to bring food for his family. The situation was very difficult in northern Gaza, and he didn’t come home on time. Everyone was asking a day, two days, three days passed. they found his car, but they did not find him or any trace of him."
But even though Mr Kaskeen wants to head to Gaza to look for his cousin, he says there's this one big barrier that many will face when being on the ground.
"The main concern of many relatives, both here and in Gaza, is searching for some of the family members who were missing and whom we do not even know where they are. Were they imprisoned? Were they among the dead."
Jonathan Crickx is the chief of communications at the United Nations Children's Funds.
His organisation has been trying to help displaced children find their families in the past two years.
"Since the beginning of the war, 17,000 children have been separated or unaccompanied. We also trying to trace them, so what we do, especially during the war, before the ceasefire, we were trying to reunite the children with their parents, most often from the north to the south."
In a statement to SBS News, the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade says Australians should NOT travel to Gaza and areas near its border, due to an extreme risk to health and safety.
The Government's Smart Traveller website also warns the government has limited ability to provide consular assistance in most cases in relation to the area.
