Gaza- At the gate of the Palestine Stadium in the center of Gaza City, feet are immersed in mud at the entrance, and on the left are mounds of garbage, and on the other side are animals tied by their displaced owners to electricity poles that have been out for more than a year, while the smell of sewage wafts in the place.
As far as the eye can see, hundreds of tents are spread out in a scene that brings back to the Palestinian memory the tragedy of the first Nakba. In the middle, men spread out a mat and pray on it, while others lie on it, turning their faces to the vast expanse of the sky to escape the narrowness of the dark tents.
And between the alleys, there were washed clothes hung by women on ropes connected between the facing tents, and at the entrance to one of them stood three twin children. Their mother brought them a large plate of mujaddara, which she had brought from a semi-daily hospice that philanthropists set up for the displaced in the playground. The mother divided the food. On plates for her children who rushed to her, after they spent the night hungry.
It is compounded
Tel Aviv Tribune Net spoke to Amir’s mother while she was feeding her children. At the beginning of her speech, her son Amir interrupted her with his mouth full of food, saying, “They took my parents…” Then his brother Jude said in a louder voice, “And they killed my brother.” These four words, spoken by the two children, summarize the story of a family whose lives Israel turned around in two days. .
Umm Amir explains to Tel Aviv Tribune Net the details of her story, saying, “I gave birth to my child Muhammad by caesarean section, and the next day the occupation asked us to evacuate Kamal Adwan Hospital, so the doctors ordered me to go out and leave him in the nursery as it was safe and protected,” but she did not know that her response to the doctors’ demand meant handing him over to death. The occupation disrupted the oxygen pipes, so the nursery children suffocated and Muhammad died.
She added, “After the siege of the hospital ended, its administration contacted us to take my son, and my husband brought him in a white shroud!” It was a shock from which the mother, who had not yet recovered from her child’s birth wound, trembled, which she described by saying, “He was like a sheep, white and plump, with eyes drawn on a face as round as a full moon.” “, then She was silent for a while before she burst into tears, “We dug a hole at the door of the house and buried him. We didn’t even bury him well. I wish I had brought him with me and buried him next to me!”
Two days after the tragedy of losing their son, Abu Amir decided to save his family and flee the northern Gaza Strip. It did not occur to him that he would not be saved, as the occupation had kidnapped him while they were crossing the military checkpoint, so the mother was forced to complete the road with her three children, while putting pressure on the infected wound of her operation. She wonders, “My husband is a farmer. He has nothing to do with the organizations. If he were a soldier, as they say, would he dare to cross?!”
Umm Amir arrived with her children at the playground where the displaced people from the north were heading, and began searching for food, drink, and a tent to help her and her children survive. She remained as she was until she met her mother by chance in the same place, so she joined 20 members of her family in a tent whose area did not exceed 15 meters. They cram into it at night and sleep on four mattresses in a space that does not allow their bodies to turn.
Umm Amir says, “I can bear everything and it is easy, but give me back my husband. I cannot be strong enough to take care of my children alone. I tremble every time they call for him whenever they need something and cannot find it.” Tel Aviv Tribune Net asked the triplets what they most wish for, and one of them replied, “I want chicken.” Another said that he craved meat, while their third sister said, “Bring me my parents.”
They took me back to Jabalia
Alone at the door of his tent, with his injured foot, Saeed Shalash awaits the boiling of tea set on the wood stove and rushes to it, only to be brought out by Tel Aviv Tribune Net’s question, “How are things?” From his state of silence, and after a long sigh, he replied, “As you can see, the situation is needless to say.” The people of the tents believe that words do not describe their suffering, and what they are experiencing is too complex to be narrated by tongues or written down by language.
During Shalash’s talk to Tel Aviv Tribune Net, the sound of his child screaming from inside the tent did not stop. His wife came out carrying him, saying, “A few days old child wants to breastfeed, and I have no milk. I have only eaten empty bread since yesterday.” Then the husband followed by saying, “You see our situation. How can I react?” Now? I have left Jabalia stripped of my money and I do not have a single penny.”
With a choked voice and eyes filled with tears, the man urged Tel Aviv Tribune Net to enter to see his other son. He found a child lying on a mattress in the dark tent, holding out his foot with platinum skewers stuck in it. The father explained his son’s condition: “He cannot sleep because of the pain, he needs painkillers, he needs treatments, he needs… “Food to recover, and I cannot provide him anything.”
“What are you demanding now?” Tel Aviv Tribune Net asked him, and he answered, “Send me back to Jabalia. I want to live a decent life worthy of my humanity, not the life of animals that we live today!”
Returning home seems to be a wish stuck in the hearts of everyone in this place, regardless of their ages, even the little girl Amal, who intercepted Tel Aviv Tribune Net at the alley of her tent, where she was carrying a wooden stick and half-sitting, drawing a shape on the sand of the camp, and when Tel Aviv Tribune Net asked her what she was drawing? She replied, “Pete, I want to return to my home in Jabalia. I am not happy in this place.”
“A tragic life”
For the first time, the displaced people called on Tel Aviv Tribune Net to talk to them, as if they were carrying a concern that they wanted to reveal or vent about. As soon as they passed by Souad, who was baking loaves of bread on firewood next to her tent, she opened her palm full of traces of the stove and said, “You are asking about our livelihood? It looks like this black thing.” .
Sharp looks burned in her eyes, which she translated by saying, “My mother is an old woman. She suffers from colds constantly. She does not have winter clothes, and I do not have money to buy them.”
Next to her is Islam Al-Wahidi, who explained to Al-Jazeera Net their reliance on buying used bale clothes, displayed at the stadium gate, which are sold at low prices, and adding, “Living in the tent is tragic and humiliating.”
Islam says that she and her family were forced to move after the occupation destroyed their residential square in Beit Lahia, and with every step they took away from their home, “their souls were slipping from their bodies,” she says. The occupation also kidnapped her second brother after her older brother, journalist Nidal al-Wahidi, had been arrested on the 7th. From October 2023.
Like other displaced people, the Islam family arrived at the stadium after walking for hours on bumpy roads between Israeli tanks. Many of them were forced to abandon all their burdens and save their lives. Days after their arrival, the winds intensified and it rained, and they found themselves naked in front of the roaring hail that was eating away at their bones.
Fragile tents
Umm Hassan describes to Tel Aviv Tribune Net the first winter night when they woke up to torrents flowing over them while they were sleeping, which prompted her to wrap her children in quilts and stand them on stones in the middle of the fabric tent that was swayed by the wind. She says, “Can you imagine that winter would destroy your sleep and you would be deprived of sleep because it drowned your bed, and you would not know Where and how can you protect your children from it?” She added, “Oh Lord, make it a mild and harmless winter!”
Tel Aviv Tribune Net monitored Gazans inventing solutions to avoid the flow of rainwater into their tents. One of them raised the floor of the tent with layers of sand before erecting it so that it was higher than the playing field. Another brought tiles from destroyed homes around him and paved the tent floor, while others surrounded their tents with large sandbags to prevent entry. Water, as for the roofs, they put nylon to try to prevent water leakage, but despite all this, nothing prevents it from leaking from an outlet that was not They take him into account often.
It has become known that the tents do not have access to electricity, and the displaced do not have money to buy batteries and at least provide lamp lighting. They rely on candles or on the lights of their mobile phones, which they charge from phone and device charging points in the surrounding areas.
The tents also look like adjacent rooms, each separated by a distance of no more than two metres, so whispering is the dominant language of dialogue, and women also suffer from a lack of privacy. Umm Muhammad, the wife of a prisoner and mother of five girls, says to Tel Aviv Tribune Net: “When night falls and we turn on the light bulb, it becomes The thin fabric of the tent reveals us and our movements inside it, forcing us to hang our clothes on ropes along its edges to cover us.”
This privacy is also lacking in waiting queues, which are not limited to the hospice and filling water. Access to the toilet also requires a queue and a long wait, which has prompted many women to ration their food so as not to have to stand and wait for a long time to enter the toilet.
Tentmakers
The mothers spread the tent floor with mats, rugs, or blankets, to avoid sitting or living on the sandy soil, and they agree that the most difficult task is keeping the floor clean with every foot that steps on the muddy ground outside.
While roaming around the camp, Tel Aviv Tribune Net followed a stream of water and soap leaking from under the fabric of a tent, at the entrance of which was a large pot of water placed on a wood stove, and from inside was the voice of a child shouting tremblingly, “It’s cold, Mama, it’s cold.” So Tel Aviv Tribune Net asked Musab’s mother to enter, who She had placed her child on a large stone inside the tent to pour water on him that was absorbed by the sand of the tent, and said, “This is the first shower in 10 days, so there is no designated place.” For bathing, we do not have detergents or firewood to heat the water.”
Since the stadium bathrooms were devoid of places designated for bathing, it was noteworthy that most of the “tent makers” designated a corner for bathing inside the tent, and there were many forms of this. One woman stopped her children in the large kneading bowl and poured water on them, and another designated a square that she defined with stones at a specific height so that they would not Water seeps into the tent, and others stop them on stones or tiles in the corner of the tents.
To avoid children walking a long distance at night to reach the toilets, the men dig a deep hole in which to relieve themselves next to the tent, or they relieve themselves in buckets and then clean them in the morning!
All those interviewed by Tel Aviv Tribune Net once owned warm homes, private rooms, and walls that covered them, but the Israeli occupation stripped them of everything, returning them to the zero stage, with nothing in life except what kept them breathing.
