This summer in Western Europe, we are constantly talking about “unprecedented heat waves”. According to the media, the authorities work hard to help people to face and protect themselves from the negative effects of stifling temperatures.
As a person in Gaza, it is difficult not to be darkly amused by this panic.
After all, while temperatures started to increase, my homeland – at least what remains – was transformed into an outdoor furnace.
Now, in the middle of another hot and humid Mediterranean summer, we don’t even have the bare minimum to protect us from heat. I read the report after the report advising Europeans to stay inside, stay hydrated, use sunscreen and avoid intense external activity. Meanwhile, we, in Gaza, have no houses, no water, no shade and no escape.
We cannot “limit the outdoor activity” because everything we need to survive is outside: water trucks that can happen twice a week if we are lucky, food distributions, firewood to recover. We cannot “stay hydrated” because the water is rare, rationed and often polluted. And a sunscreen? We would find medication earlier on Mars earlier.
Summer in Gaza was a season of joy with beach days, courtyards of the courtyard, a bit under the trees. But the current Israeli assault transformed it into a season of torment. The beaches are blocked. Courses are rubble. The trees are ashes. Israel has flattened most of Gaza, transforming the soil into dust, is traveled into deserts and cities into cemeteries. Gaza is now a city without shaded.
The heat itself has become a silent killer. But the deadly summer of Gaza is not natural. Nor is it another consequence of climate change. It is the manufacture of Israel. The endless bombardment has created greenhouse gas emissions and thick layers of dust and pollutants. The fires burn without control. The heaps of waste rot in the sun. Agricultural land is shaved. What was once a climate crisis is now climate cruelty, designed by military force.
The irony is bitter: Europe blames its heat waves on a weather “heat dome”, a bubble of hot air trapped. But Israel trapped us in another type of dome: overcrowded nylon tents which act like ovens in the sun. These camps are not shelters – they are slow cooking rooms. They trap heat, stench, fear and sorrow. And we moved them, have nowhere to go.
Summer is no longer a season that I look forward to. It is a dilemma that I suppose. The sun is suspended like a sentence. It burns the floor under my feet so that even my slippers burn. I can’t stay inside the tent during the day. It’s too hot to breathe. But I can’t be outside long either. I have to go. I have to wait in long lines for water, then for food – under such a punishing sun that I fear as much as famine.
We are told to queue with discipline, but how can you queue when your body is weak and your child is hungry? I push through the crowd, not beyond greed, but despair. I recover the fuel – wood, plastic, everything to burn. I go back to my tent only to collapse in more warmth.
The nights offer no mercy. With most of the Gaza population now started near the coast, the tents radiate heat against each other. Unlike the earth, they do not cool after sunset. They store suffering. I feel the breath of my neighbors, their perspiration, their sorrow as if the heat itself was contagious. Insects invade us in waves, attracted by heat. My mother and sister move them away as if they were the bombs that we can still hear in the distance.
Living in a tent for a second summer should facilitate the task. This is not the case. This worsens the situation.
Last summer, after being moved from our house in eastern Khan Younis, we had at least one food variety. There were still aid deliveries. We could still cook. But since March 2, when Israel has further blocked humanitarian aid, we have descended into engineering famine.
The United States and Israel are now organizing a grotesque theater called “Gaza Humanitarian Foundation” to distribute flour. They place bags of flour inside metal cages as if we are livestock. People are forced to queue for hours under an open sky, stripped of shadow and dignity. The soldiers shout them to remove their hats, go to bed against the ground on flamboyant asphalt, crawl for food. After all this, you could always leave empty hand – if you are not shot first.
They lowered the bar of our existence. We no longer ask for security or shelter. We only ask: do we have enough food to last the day?
Israel has combined all the deprivation tools: warmth without shade, thirst without water, hungry without hope. There is no electricity to manage desalination or pumping stations. No fuel to cool the coming water. No flour, no fish, no markets. For many of us, this summer could be our last.
It is not a climate crisis. It is the time used as a weapon – a war waged not only with bombs and bullets, but also of warmth, thirst and slow death. Gaza does not only burn – it is suffocated under an artificial sun. And the world looks, calls it a “conflict” and checks the forecasts.
The opinions expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect the editorial position of Tel Aviv Tribune.