“It seems they want to send us to the Egyptian Sinai. I have also read that there are Israeli ministers who want to exterminate us all or who want to turn Gaza into a huge car park. “I don't know what's going to come next.” Salah Ahmed sighs anguishedly on the other end of the phone. Since October 7, this 41-year-old father and his three children, ages 8 to 15, have had to move house three times to save their lives after his home in Gaza City was bombed. Now they are in Rafah, at the southern end of the Strip, where according to the UN there are already more than a million people, in a region where about 250,000 previously lived. And every day more families arrive fleeing the bombings in areas located somewhat further north.
“Everything is crowded, there is not a square meter without people. It is something unimaginable. And the number of displaced people continues to increase,” he explains by phone from Rafah Samir Zaqut, of the Palestinian NGO Al Mezan, before his story is interrupted by a very loud roar. “They're bombing something nearby,” she explains, hardly showing any surprise. “People in Rafah no longer have a place to sleep and end up spending the night on the street, covered in plastic, not even in tents. People are sick and very weak. They are killing us, even without bombing us. It is awful. And we don’t have any choice,” she adds. As the head of UN humanitarian operations, Martin Griffiths, denounced on Friday, Gaza has become “simply an uninhabitable place”, “a place of death and hopelessness”, whose inhabitants are “facing daily threats under the gaze of the world”. It is difficult to find anyone in Gaza right now who has not been forced to leave their home at least once in the last three months.
They are killing us, even without bombing us. It is awful. And we don't have any choice.
Samir Zaqut, Al Mezan
According to UNRWA [agencia de la ONU para los refugiados palestinos], 1.9 million people, that is, 85% of the population of the Strip, have had to move. Rafah, facing the Egyptian border and the sea, is the last place they can flee to. The town has been preserved for now from the massive bombings, but the living conditions of so many people in such a small place are difficult to imagine: a city overcrowded and flooded with tents and makeshift shelters, with hungry and sick people and children barefoot despite the cold and rain, where it is difficult to get food and clean water and fear of the future darkens spirits even more.
“No one knows what comes next. The Israelis want to displace all or almost all Gazans, but I'm not sure they can do it either. Maybe that is why there is hope for negotiation,” Zaqut confides.
Since October 7, when Israeli bombing began on the Strip after the attack in which Hamas killed 1,200 Israelis, more than 22,000 Palestinians have died violently, and at least 7,000 are under the rubble, according to figures from the Ministry of Health, controlled by the Islamist movement. 70% of them are women and children.
Survival
Najwa, who does not want to give her full name, left her home in central Gaza 15 days ago and settled in Rafah, with her husband and three children, in the home of her son-in-law's family. “I don't even know how I am, to be honest. It's like all the feelings have frozen. My priority is to survive today and I don't think about anything else, only that the day passes and we stay alive,” she explains via WhatsApp.
The family, crammed into a small apartment, struggles every day to find food and water. “We found only some basic things: there is no fruit, the only vegetables for sale are tomatoes, potatoes and eggplants, there are no cookies or coffee for sale and meat is practically impossible to find and pay for,” Najwa describes.
My priority is to survive today and I don't think about anything else, only that the day passes and we stay alive
Najwa, displaced from Gaza
Zaqut adds that each small act of daily life lasts for hours and becomes a supreme effort. “Nothing works. You have to make bread because it is difficult to find a bakery, but flour costs six or seven times more, like all basic foods. And when you get it, it turns out that there is no gas either, so you have to make a fire. Furthermore, there is no water either and we have to walk an hour to get a gallon, because there are no vehicles or space to circulate on many streets in Rafah,” he summarizes.
Despite everything, both are aware that their families are part of the privileged, because they have a roof and minimal hygiene. “There are a lot of people outside and there are no tents or blankets for everyone. People are hungry and cold in Rafah,” Najwa describes. “And no one knows what comes next. They are taking us to the limit. Maybe later they will throw us into the Sinai. “Everyone is waiting, no one knows anything, we only hear horrible rumors,” he states.
If in October and November the majority of Gazans interviewed insisted that their desire was to stay in Gaza and return home as soon as possible, as occurred in the previous offensives, their discourse has changed as the bombings intensified. “I want someone to get me out of here. Do you think people want to stay in the middle of all this destruction and after having lost so much?” asks Najwa.
Furthermore, a huge part of the people crammed into Rafah no longer have anywhere to return to. “We lived in the United Kingdom because my wife had a scholarship to do a doctorate, but a year ago we wanted to return to Gaza. It is the land of our fathers and ours. But now we no longer have a house and I just hope that Rafah is not attacked massively and this ends. My little eight-year-old son can't even go to the bathroom alone and barely sleeps. I just want them to see his mother again, but the hardest thing is that I can't do anything for them,” explains Ahmed. The war surprised his wife in Europe, alone and pregnant with her fourth child, while she finished arranging the documents to complete her doctorate remotely in Gaza.
“Perhaps when the Israeli army considers it finished in our areas, they will order us to return to our destroyed homes. I don't even know what state mine is in,” explains Talal, a primary school teacher in the Jabalia refugee camp and currently displaced in Rafah, asking that his full name not be cited.
Inability to save lives
“Even if the situation remains, Rafah is no longer viable. It is like an immense camp where the situation is impossible to describe and imagine. If we don't manage to stop this, other social norms to survive will begin to break and it will be devastating, because people can't take it anymore and can't move anymore, because they are on the border. An immediate and sustained ceasefire is needed,” Nicholas Papachrysostomou, emergency coordinator for Doctors Without Borders (MSF), who spent five weeks in the south of the Gaza Strip between November and December, stressed in an interview with this newspaper. The
person in charge recalled, for example, that he witnessed the looting of an NGO truck by a group of Gazans, who apologized for doing so, but explained that they were very hungry.
“It is very difficult to understand the magnitude, severity and continuity of the attacks that the population of Gaza is experiencing. It is also surprising that the entire international community has been observing this for three months and already sees it as a movie that is happening in front of our eyes and we are not able to achieve a ceasefire,” he adds.
Gaza is a black hole, we cannot talk about a humanitarian response, but rather a trickle of aid in an ocean of enormous needs
Nicholas Papachrysostomou, MSF
In mid-December, MSF managed to reopen the Al Shaboura clinic in Rafah, where it provides primary care thanks to local and expatriate staff, and managed to bring 50 tons of medical supplies into the Strip. “In one week we saw 1,500 patients. What were these people doing before? Where, for example, did the children with diarrhea that we treated go?” asks Papachrysostomou. According to Unicef, cases of diarrhea in boys and girls under five years of age increased worryingly in Gaza in mid-December, when some 3,200 new cases a day were recorded, compared to the 2,000 a month that were identified before this escalation. “Children's health in the Gaza Strip is rapidly deteriorating,” the UN agency warned.
The MSF emergency coordinator also explained that there is currently no post-operative service in Gaza to provide cures or manage pain, due to lack of staff and resources, and that his clinic is receiving patients with “very complicated” medical conditions. , such as serious infections in wounds and burns that can cause death. In addition, due to overcrowding, lack of hygiene and correct nutrition, and the cold, one out of every two patients received at this medical center currently suffers from acute respiratory infections, according to this official. The WHO has reported that of the 36 hospitals in Gaza, only 13 are partially functional, some actually offering very few services. Those that are still operational lack everything: personnel, beds, anesthesia, antibiotics, fuel and water.
“I don't forget the faces of my colleagues from Gaza at times. Livid before the tragedy and saddened by the material inability to save more lives. Gaza is a black hole, we cannot talk about a humanitarian response, but rather a trickle of aid in an ocean of enormous needs,” insists Papachrysostomou. “What I experienced during the five weeks I spent in Gaza is a punishment for people who do not talk about politics and who have nothing to do with Hamas,” he concludes.
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