In the corners of makeshift tents, tucked inside bags that survived Israel's bombing and carried in the exhausted hands of the displaced, the key remains more than a rusted piece of metal.
Since the Nakba of 1948 , Palestinians have held onto the keys of homes they were forced to leave as proof that a house once stood and that a story did not end with displacement.
Seventy-seven years later, the same scene repeats in Gaza: destroyed homes, scattered families, and keys carried from one displacement to the next as if they are the last thing left of home.
Rami al-Sharafi, 40, a community activist, director of Radio Zaman FM and father of five, carries three keys in his car.
One opens what remains of his house in Jabalia, destroyed on the first day of the war. One opens his office, also destroyed. And the last one opens the family farm.
Beside them sits a fourth key, inherited, not his own. It belongs to the family's house in the Palestinian village of Harbiya , occupied and emptied in 1948.
That same key has passed through generations.
"My house in Jabalia was destroyed in 2023," Rami says.
"Today I will pass that key to my children, just as I inherited the key to Harbiya. The places change but the story repeats itself."
For Rami, the key is not a relic. It is a running account of what has been taken.
"The occupation has tried for decades to empty Palestinians of their land, their homes, their memory," he tells The New Arab. "We hold these keys as evidence of our right and our presence."
His grandparents lived in tents in Gaza after the Nakba, and now 78 years on from the catastrophe, his family lives in displacement tents — a haunting reminder that the Nakba never truly ended.
"A house is not just concrete walls," he says. "It is memory, warmth, the details of a life. For more than two and a half years, I have been displaced from my home," Rami shares. "Every night, I remember how the occupation destroyed our memories and tried to destroy the foundations of our lives. This land is ours. We will remain in it as the olive and the oil remain."
Aya Skaik, a 35-year-old mother of four, left Gaza two months after Israel's war began. She now lives in Canada, keeping the key to her house in the Sheikh Radwan neighbourhood.
"It is no longer just a piece of metal," she tells The New Arab. "It is the only security I have to prove my right to that place. It is a thread connecting me to the smell of my walls, to the details of a life I left behind." The key will find a door For Aya, the key carries both meanings simultaneously: the lost home and the will to remain.
"Carrying the key is itself an act of resistance," she says. "We do not carry it to mourn ruins. We carry it to confirm that we are staying, that our departure to Canada is temporary, and that the idea of return does not die. We live on hope, as our parents and grandparents lived on hope."
She draws no distance between her grandparents' Nakba and her own.
"What we used to hear about 1948, we are now living in full detail, the fear, the confusion, the moving from place to place, packing in a hurry. Just as my grandfather kept the key to his house in Jaffa, I find myself holding the key to Sheikh Radwan. The memory passes from one generation to the next the same way."
Her father gave her more than the key. "He gave me the story of the house, which once opened," she says.
Fatima Sahwil, a cultural researcher and mother of four, sits in a house that does not feel like hers. She started from zero, trying to build new memories. Most of them are connected to the war.
"The key is a symbol of loss and longing for the memory of a place," the 30-year-old tells The New Arab. "I am living somewhere that does not resemble me, that is not the place I was attached to."
She holds the key to a home she no longer has and asks herself the same question. "Can I build a house that carries the beauty of my first home and its same memories?"
For Fatima, the answer lives in the key itself. "It means there is hope that one day we will return to our safe homes," she says. "The key is a symbol of longing, for every small detail that gave a place its soul."
Her grandmother was displaced in 1948 and held her key until the end.
"My grandmother carried her key because she believed she would go back. Today I carry mine for the same hope. That is the real intersection between past and present, hope, longing, and the desire to build a whole and beautiful life despite everything." A key for every Nakba Bissan Natil, a children's literature writer in her twenties, returned to northern Gaza after being displaced when the occupation blocked access to the north. She went back to find her neighbourhood destroyed.
"In the beginning of the displacement, it was hard to imagine we would return to the north," Bissan tells The New Arab .
"But we returned. So I feel that every line the occupation draws can change, and that the land will remain for its people no matter how long it takes."
For Bissan, the key is part of identity and presence. "Palestinians carry the key as part of their being, as if it is the last proof of home," she says.
"Our grandparents, when they were displaced, did not imagine the absence would last more than seven decades. They believed it would be days. That resembles our feeling today, that we will return no matter how long it takes, even though the tools of destruction and erasure have become bigger and more brutal."
She describes Palestinian pain as an inherited memory.
"The pain passed from my grandmother's memory to mine. The feeling of shock renews itself. We cannot separate what our grandparents lived from what we are living today."
Her grandmother died dreaming of returning to her home in the occupied city of Majdal.
"I ask myself whether I will keep the same hope of rebuilding the house and the life as it was," she says. "The colour of our soil resembles the colour of our skin. How can we be uprooted from a land that is part of us?" Bissan asks. "The scenes of displacement today may resemble the displacement of our grandparents, but hope has always been part of Palestinian steadfastness, and of the ability to return to what remains of home and life." Ansam Al-Kitaa is a freelance journalist based in Gaza. For years, she has covered the successive wars in Gaza and their humanitarian and social impacts for international and local outlets This piece is published in collaboration with Egab