For weeks, the fear has been growing.
More than a million Palestinians have fled to Rafah, the southernmost region of Gaza, hoping to escape the war. Now, Israel has threatened to extend its invasion into that area as well.
In days marked by efforts to find food, water and shelter, uncertainty has dominated people’s conversations, said Khalid Shurrab, a charity worker staying in a battered tent in Rafah with his family. .
“We have two options: stay as we are or face our destiny, death,” said Shurrab, 36. “People literally have no other safe place to go.”
Rafah, which until now had been spared Israel’s response, has become a new focal point in a war that is in its sixth month. Most of Gaza’s 2.2 million inhabitants have arrived in that area, causing the population to increase and its limited resources to be depleted.
And now, with Israel signaling its intention to go after Hamas militants in Rafah, and as Egypt prevents most Gazans from crossing its southern border, families fear they will be trapped.
In Rafah province, where less than 300,000 people lived before the war, space has become at a premium. Displaced families fill schools, tent camps sprawl across open fields, and pedestrians crowd the streets.
Cooking gas is so scarce that the air is thick with smoke from bonfires burning salvaged wood and pieces of furniture. Fuel is expensive, so people walk, cycle or use carts pulled by donkeys and horses. Because Rafah is located next to the Egyptian border, where most humanitarian aid enters, it receives more supplies than other parts of Gaza.
However, many residents are so desperate that they throw stones at aid trucks to try to make them stop or gather around them to try to get whatever they can. Last month, hundreds of people were killed or wounded in chaos involving Israeli gunfire after a convoy of trucks attempted to deliver aid to Gaza City in the north of the territory.
Most of the people who have taken refuge in Rafah spend the day trying to meet their basic needs: finding clean water for drinking and bathing, getting enough food and trying to reassure their children when Israeli attacks hit nearby places.
“Everything is difficult here,” said Hadeel Abu Sharek, 24, who is staying with his 3-year-old daughter and other relatives at a closed restaurant in Rafah. “Our dreams have been shattered. Our life has become a nightmare.”
Her family usually only finds enough food for one meal a day, she said, and although they boil water before drinking it, many have fallen ill, including her daughter. They don’t have a place where it’s easy to get medicine.
“The shelling is terrifying, especially for children,” he said, adding that everyone gathers in a corner when they hear the Israeli attacks, fearing the roof will collapse.
The restaurant was the second place they found shelter since they left their homes in northern Gaza at the start of the war. Now they have to move again, he said. They will be taken out of the restaurant, but they were given metal poles and waterproof fabric to build a temporary tent.
Shelters are so scarce that rents have risen, schools have become de facto refugee camps and many families sleep in tents or hang pieces of plastic to protect themselves from the rain and cold.
Shortly after the invasion began, Ismail al Afify, a tailor from northern Gaza, camped with his family under the concrete stairs of a school. Since then, the building has filled with many other refugees, and sometimes four families share a single classroom.
To meet their needs, Al Afify’s children keep an eye out for aid and water trucks so they can run for supplies or fill their buckets with water. When they have flour, her daughter-in-law bakes flatbread with other women in a makeshift clay oven on the street.
He often goes to bed hungry, said Al Afify, 62.
Shortages of fuel and other supplies have nearly paralyzed local medical facilities.
In an interview, Marwan al Hams, director of Abu Yousef al Najjar hospital, the largest in Rafah, listed the services he could no longer offer: intensive care, complex surgeries, CT or MRI scans and cancer treatments. Doctors lack painkillers and medications for diabetes and hypertension. Their ability to perform dialysis is so reduced that patients with kidney diseases have died.
The hospital itself is overcrowded, with displaced families who have taken refuge in the building and its hallways. There are only 63 beds for about 300 patients, he said.
“Most cases are treated on the ground,” he said.
In the first months of the war, the Israeli military repeatedly ordered Gazans to evacuate south for their own safety. But Israel has also often attacked Rafah, killing people and damaging buildings. On Wednesday, Israeli forces attacked an aid warehouse in Rafah, an event that left a U.N. worker dead, according to the U.N. Middle East Palestine Refugee Agency, the largest aid group on the ground. in Gaza.
Aid groups and United Nations officials have warned that an invasion of Rafah would be catastrophic for civilians in Gaza, and US President Joe Biden called that possibility a “limit,” although he added that helping Israel to defend himself was still “critical.” Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu responded with his own limit: “May October 7 never happen again,” he said, referring to the Hamas-led attack on Israel that started the war. According to Israeli authorities, around 1,200 people were killed and around 240 were taken hostage to Gaza.
With a promise to destroy Hamas, Israel launched a bombing campaign and an invasion that, according to Gaza Health authorities, has led to the deaths of more than 31,000 people, a number that does not distinguish between civilians and combatants.
In mid-February, an Israeli attack hit the Al Hoda Mosque in Rafah, collapsing its roof and causing significant damage to the building, according to Palestinian media and Aaed Abu Hasanein, the prayer leader at the site. The motive for the attack was unclear. Israel has accused Hamas of using civilian buildings, such as schools and mosques, for terrorist activities, a charge Hamas denies.
The attack disabled most of the building, Abu Hasanein said.
“As you see, there is nothing left,” he said. “Everything has disappeared.”
But people continue to pray at the mosque, he added. The hallway, the least damaged part of the building, can accommodate about 150 people. There, before, visitors left their shoes.
“This is the safest place, the one that hasn’t burned,” Abu Hasanein said.
“The bombings are terrifying, especially for children.”
Resident of Rafah, haunted by the war between Israel and Hamas.
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