Life as told by displaced people in tents in northern Gaza Strip | Politics

Gaza- All the walls that sheltered the Gazan were demolished by Israel, his life’s work evaporated, and his options of moving to familiar homes became non-existent. All that remained for him was a room in a shelter or school, or an area of ​​land on which to set up a tent.

Although the people of Gaza are not looking for stability as much as they are looking for safety, and a place where death does not come near them and where Israeli bombs do not fall, the centers and schools have also become an Israeli target. Despite all this, the Palestinians do not leave them, as there is no alternative.

Tel Aviv Tribune Net toured the alleys of the tents of one of the displacement centres in the northern Gaza Strip, and listened to the voices of the mothers of the displaced as they tried to manage their daily lives, and to the looks and words of the children after they were deprived of food, clothing or shoes to satisfy their hunger.

Tents that reduce houses

In one of the largest shelters in Jabalia, north of the Gaza Strip, on the left side of it is Jabalia School, and on the opposite side there are tents stretching endlessly because the school is completely full, built of nylon stretched by the heat of the sun, and at the deepest point a long line of displaced people stands waiting their turn to fill drinking water.

While walking through the tent alleys, Tel Aviv Tribune Net came across a woman lying on the ground at the entrance to her tent, with a hole in the roof open to let in air. When asked, “How are you, Hajja?” Umm Khalil responded as if a volcano of oppression had erupted from her mouth. After adjusting her sitting position, she asked, “Is this life? Is this living?”

Ten months have passed and the tent is her home, with her daughter and her two widowed daughters-in-law and their children. She says: “I am brokenhearted. I have just come from the circumcision of my daughter’s son, whom I gave birth to after his father was martyred. My heart breaks for him and for his loneliness!”

Upon entering the tent, one becomes amazed at the mothers’ ability to condense an entire home into it. They invent details for everything in its corners. Here, they pile up the mattresses and blankets, and on shelves fixed to the tent’s wood, they arrange the clothes. On the other side, there are pots blackened by the wood fires, melting their bases, and cloth curtains leading to a ground toilet and buckets of water for bathing.

The heat inside the tent was unbearable. We went out to continue the interview in the alleys outside, where several women were sitting on chairs in front of their tents and saying, “The heat is suffocating us.” They even continued their tasks in the alleys separating the tents. One woman was picking the mallow leaves from their stems, another was washing her clothes, and another was combing her daughter’s hair. Their conversations did not stop and were dominated by misery and suffering, like the features of their faces. One of them asked to stare at her and said, “Look at our burned faces, look at our features, how they have become!”

Umm Malik complains about the spread of rodents and insects in the tents, and she tells Tel Aviv Tribune Net: “I cannot sleep at night while I am killing the flying cockroaches that walk on my children’s bodies, and shooing away the mosquitoes that bite them.” Allergies and infectious skin diseases are also spreading among children, especially with the accumulation of waste and the spread of sewage in the areas surrounding the tents.

No food, no clothes

A little girl’s screams led us to a nearby tent, where her mother was carrying her and rocking her as she writhed in her arms, refusing to be still! Tel Aviv Tribune Net asked the mother’s permission to enter, and before asking questions, she said, “My little girl is hungry. She refuses to eat canned food. Look at her thin body. She is one year old and weighs 5 kilograms from malnutrition.”

She says it with the anger of someone who is helpless: “No vegetables, no fruits, no meat, not even cereal for children, and if it is available, I cannot afford it!” It seemed that this mother’s helplessness was like the helplessness of thousands of mothers in Gaza, whose children’s flesh melts in front of them without them being able to do anything.

As for Umm Hassan, who lost 24 kilograms since the beginning of the famine, she told Tel Aviv Tribune Net: “For a year, nothing has entered our stomachs except canned food and flour. We don’t even have the energy to carry out our tasks and duties due to the lack of nutrition.” As for the lack of medicines and necessary treatments for them, she said: “I have high blood pressure and diabetes. The blood pressure medications have run out in the country. If we don’t die from the bombing, we will die from the disease.”

All the children’s eyes in this camp seem to be shining, revealing their desire to talk to any visitor who comes to them from outside. Tel Aviv Tribune Net approached Farah and asked her: “The ground is hot, where are your shoes, Jamila?” She replied: “I don’t have any, I have to walk barefoot.” Her grandmother interrupted her to justify to us: “We don’t have money to buy shoes, and if we had money, we would definitely buy food!”

“Do you need shoes?” Tel Aviv Tribune Net asked her. She did not think before answering: “I need to see my father. I have not seen him since the beginning of the war. He was detained in the southern Gaza Strip and was unable to return.” She broke down crying as if a reservoir of tears had overflowed until it exploded. Her grandfather embraced her and said: “Sorry, sir. Say ‘God is sufficient for me, and He is the best Disposer of affairs.’” She repeated after him, wiping away her tears that told us about a war raging inside her, the fire of which no one else could feel but her.

At the door of the tent were other children in tattered clothes, most of them barefoot. One of them answered as soon as he looked at him: “We have been barefoot for two months. We are in pain and dying walking on the hot ground, but what can we do? We have to walk!”

In a nearby tent, a little girl was playing with her grandparents, sitting on a floor mat. The little girl ran to us when we stood at the entrance to the tent to receive us. During her conversation with Tel Aviv Tribune Net, we learned that she was the only survivor, along with her infant sister, from the Ghanem family. Her parents and seven siblings were martyred, and the two little girls remained with their grandfather.

“What did the little girl do to live as an orphan and alone? Why did they kill her brothers when they were children, the eldest of whom was no more than 10 years old?” the grandmother asks angrily. “Where is our Arab nation? Where are the Muslims? Are they asleep? Why?” She continues, her lips trembling: “Let them annihilate us so they can get rid of us and we can get rid of this life!” A life in which they see no reason to survive, or a single good thing to cling to for, as they say.