As the Israeli invasion of Rafah enters its third week, hundreds of thousands of people fleeing the southern Gaza city find themselves in miserable conditions in their new camps and shelters.
Shortages of food, clean water and toilets have made the resettlement experience particularly dreadful, Gazans say, and price gouging has made the trip unaffordable for those in need of transportation, including the elderly and disabled.
“We are facing horrible circumstances,” said Khalil el-Halabi, a retired U.N. official in his 70s who left Rafah last week for Al-Mawasi, a seaside area that Israel has designated it as a “humanitarian zone”.
“We don’t have what we need,” Mr. Halabi said. “We can barely find water. »
More than 800,000 people have left Rafah in the past two weeks, a United Nations official said Monday. The Israeli military said the same day that more than 950,000 civilians in the city had been displaced since it issued expanded evacuation orders. A military spokesman said there were between 300,000 and 400,000 civilians left there.
THE latest wave of displacement in Gaza began on May 6 when Israel sent evacuation notices and launched military operations in eastern Rafah, along the border with Egypt. More than half of the enclave’s civilians had sought refuge in the city – most after repeatedly fleeing fighting elsewhere in the Gaza Strip.
Ali Jebril, 27, a wheelchair basketball player, said he and his family paid $600 for 35 people to be transported by bus from eastern Rafah to Khan Younis earlier this month.
Mr. Jebril, who said his wheelchair did not allow him to navigate the sandy seaside areas where many people have resettled, moved to a tent on the grounds of a hospital in Khan Younis.
“We are not living a dignified life,” he said. “We are facing a catastrophe.”
The war, he said, made him feel like he had become a burden on society, frequently asking others to help him.
Since Israeli incursions into Rafah, the city’s once-crowded shelters and tent cities have largely emptied, said Edem Wosornu, head of the United Nations humanitarian affairs office. told the Security Council on Monday. People moved to areas near Khan Younis and Deir al Balah and set up makeshift camps without sanitation, water, drainage or shelter, she said.
“We described it as a disaster, a nightmare, like hell on earth,” Ms Wosornu said. “It’s all that, and worse.”
Since the war began in October, three-quarters of Gaza’s population has been displaced, with many people moving four or five times, she said.
Israel presented the orders as a humanitarian measure to protect civilians ahead of further military actions, which it says are necessary to eliminate Hamas fighters in southern Gaza. But aid groups said the additional displacements are worsening an already dire humanitarian situation.
In his Last update, the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs described people living in groups of 500 to 700 tents, many of which were made from blankets, nylon or whatever material was available. Some tents were set up on an unstable beach slope, with waste from higher areas washing down homes into the sea, the report said.
Mr Halabi said food was available in markets, but his family had so little money it was difficult to pay for it.
“After seven months of war, we have almost nothing,” he said.
While increasing numbers of commercial trucks have entered Gaza recently, aid arriving south through the Kerem Shalom and Rafah crossings has come to a virtual halt. UNRWA, the main United Nations agency for Palestinian aid, said that in a 16-day period through Tuesday, only 69 aid trucks entered through the two crossings – the lowest rate since the first weeks of the war.
Philippe Lazzarini, head of the main United Nations agency that helps the Palestinians, wrote in a social media post that every move involves risks and is expensive.
“Each time, they are forced to leave behind the few possessions they own: mattresses, tents, kitchen utensils and basic supplies that they cannot transport or pay for transport,” said -he writes. “Every time, they have to start from scratch. »
