Exhaustion, despair and anger are grinding away at Ne'man Abu Jarad.

Once again, for the 11th time, he and his family have been forced to uproot and move across the Gaza Strip.

“Our life has drastically changed. From a stable and a safe life filled with love, stability and safety into homelessness, hunger, suffering and losing loved ones,” he said.

He spoke from outside his family tent in Khan Younis where he arrived weeks ago, forced by the Israeli offensive across the Strip.

“We’re not being displaced, we’re dying,” Ne'man said last month as the family packed up their possessions and tents.

The next day, they unpacked in a barren former agricultural land, unsure where they would now find food and water.

This has been the Abu Jarads’ life for nearly two years, since fleeing their home in the far north of Gaza days after Israel launched its onslaught in response to Hamas’ Oct. 7, 2023, attack.

Like countless Palestinian families, they have fled the length of Gaza and back, forced to move every few months as Israel attacks each new shelter.

The Associated Press has chronicled much of their journey.

During the ceasefire that began in January, they had a bittersweet return to their home, which was damaged but still standing.

But within two months, Israel broke the ceasefire, and the Abu Jarads had to wrench themselves away.

With each move, Ne'man and his wife Majida try to preserve some stability for their six daughters and their 2-year-old granddaughter amid the misery of tent life.

Their youngest child is 8-year-old Lana; the eldest is Balsam, in her 20s and married.

But the sense of futility is weighing heavier.

Since May, the family’s refuge had been a tent in Gaza City.

It wasn’t easy, but at least they got to know the neighbourhood and their neighbours and figured out where to get water and medical care.

Food was more difficult, as Israeli restrictions on aid pushed Gaza City into famine.

Ne'man joined hundreds of others waiting for aid trucks to enter from Israel.

It was dangerous – Israeli troops regularly opened fire toward the crowds, and Ne'man saw people getting killed and wounded.

But he sometimes came back with food.

“Our kids are hungry, and we cannot provide them with food, and they cannot stand still from hunger. It is normal to give up our lives for our kids,” he said in August while walking by from Zikim, thin, with flour on his face.

That day Ne’man only managed to get a small bag with flour to the family.

Majida and Ne'man worry about their younger daughter, Lana.

Their other daughters had a grounding of normal lives. But Lana was only six when Israel’s campaign overturned their lives.

Over the months, everything pushes the family to a boil - boredom, lack of privacy, the daily toil of lugging water, gathering firewood, searching for food, cleaning the tent.

Behind that lie darker thoughts: the feeling this could be their fate forever, the fear a strike could kill them.

Crammed together in the tent, the girls squabble and fight sometimes.

The latest move drained what little money they had — hundreds of dollars to buy a new tent and rent a truck to carry their belongings.

It also stripped them of everything that made life bearable.

The new camp near Khan Younis lies in a stretch of barren dirt and fields.

There’s no market nearby, no schools.

They have to walk 2 kilometres (1.2 miles) to get an internet connection.

They are surrounded by strangers.

The family spent a day clearing their spot of land, assembling their two tents — one for the family, one for Ne'man’s sister.

As they worked, an Israeli strike rang out in the distance.

They watched the black smoke rise over Khan Younis.

Exhausted by the end of the day, Ne'man still had to dig a latrine and set up the bathroom.

The area had been a closed Israeli military zone until a few weeks ago, when Israel announced displaced could move there.

An Israeli military position is not far away. They can see tanks moving in and out.

“They live in a state, and we live in a state too, there is no problem with that. The important thing is that this friction ends and that our lives settle down,“ Ne’man said on January 2024 when AP first interviewed him.

Almost two years later he, and many Palestinians, are still waiting for peace.

“We want the war to end to stop losing our loved ones.... We want our children to go back to their schools,” Ne’man said earlier this week, after US President Donald Trump announced a plan to put an end to the war the devastated the enclave .

Israel’s army said on Saturday that it would advance preparations for the first phase of Trump’s plan to end the war and return all the remaining hostages, after Hamas said it accepted parts of the deal and that others still needed to be negotiated.

The army will move to a defensive position rather than an offensive one, according to an official who spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak to the media on the record.

Still, it’s unclear how that will affect people in Gaza City.

On Saturday, the army warned Palestinians in the rest of Gaza from returning there, calling it a dangerous combat zone.

AP video by Abdel Kareem Hana and Mohammad Jahjouh