Rania Sakallah has good memories. Shortly before the war began, she and her family spent a day together on Sheikh Ijlin beach, south of Gaza City.
They stopped at the Tropical restaurant to eat chicken pizza. His twin son and daughter were about to begin their final year of studies at Al-Azhar University. There was much to hope for.
They now face the darkest of beginnings until 2024. Huddled in a cold storage in the southern border town of Rafah with other members of their family – 11 people in total – the future feels like a gaping void and the house in Gaza City that Rania and her husband Hazem built. together perhaps reduced to rubble.
“I don’t sleep at night,” says Rania. “I stay up all night thinking: What are we going to do? Where are we going to go?
Rania and Hazem, a Palestinian Authority accountant, decided to flee Gaza City on October 13, leaving their four-bedroom home behind. “Because we were very scared, we didn’t take much,” explains Rania. Carrying a few bags of clothes and canned food, they walked the 33 km to Khan Younis, taking turns pushing Rania’s 75-year-old mother, who had recently suffered a stroke. , in his wheelchair.
For about 50 days, they remained in Khan Younis, sleeping on the floor of Rania’s brother’s shop as Israel launched some of the most intense air attacks of the war on the country’s declared “safe zone” in early December. Israel.
Chased by bombs, they hit the road again, joined by the families of Rania’s brother and sister, rushing to find accommodation in Rafah, just as the heavy winter rains began.
Rania and her family are far from alone. According to the United Nations, half of Gaza’s 2.2 million residents are now crowded into schools, public buildings and makeshift camps in Rafah and nearby al-Mawasi. The most desperate are on the streets.
Although southern Gaza is supposed to be the enclave’s last refuge, Israel continues to shell the area. With aid trucks only able to carry meager supplies, illness and extreme deprivation are common, says Rania.
Speaking to Tel Aviv Tribune by phone, Rania described the battle for survival in Rafah. “Life has tired us. It’s become impossible,” she said. “It’s not just me. It’s like a million Palestinians like me. And some of them are in an even worse situation.”
Food, water and fuel
More than half a million people in Gaza are running out of food and are now at immediate risk of starvation, UN agencies said last week. Deliveries of food, water and medicine were disrupted at the start of the war, with a pause in fighting in November allowing more aid to enter via Rafah – and yet only 10 percent of the food needs are being met. currently satisfied.
In Rafah, life is about getting enough food and water to survive another day. “When you want to make bread, the first challenge is finding the flour,” explains Rania. Even this basic ingredient has become scarce, with family members queuing for hours outside a school run by the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA), which houses thousands of people and distributes food aid. Sometimes people leave empty-handed.
It is still possible to buy food, she said. But with supplies low, prices for staples like beans, chickpeas and cheese have skyrocketed, making them inaccessible to most people. Once food is secured, family members have to search outside for firewood, as fuel and gas are now impossible to obtain. Rania uses an old oil barrel as a stove for cooking.
The water only comes to the tap once a week, on Friday, but it is sometimes too dirty for showering, let alone drinking. The combination of poor diet and dirty water makes people sick, causing outbreaks of diarrhea, gastroenteritis and skin infections.
Health care
Rania does not leave the house without a mask. As the weather gets colder, catching the flu or respiratory infections can lead to death. Many of those who have taken shelter at the UNRWA school, where she queues for food, are sick, she says.
There is a room in the school which offers medical assistance but it cannot provide any treatment beyond paracetamol. “You won’t get help if you go there,” she said.
But going to the hospital is not an option either. Currently, Abu Yousef al-Najjar Hospital and Kuwaiti Rafah Hospital are operating beyond capacity, with virtually no medical equipment. The supply of fuel needed for the generators, interrupted at the start of the war, is still severely limited.
Overcrowding and poor sanitary conditions have created a whole new set of health risks. On average, 160 people housed in UNRWA schools share a single toilet and there is one shower for every 700 people, according to UN figures.
Doctors report that many are infected with parasites. Infectious dysentery, causing vomiting and diarrhea, is now widespread. Cases of contagious diseases like chickenpox, measles and viral meningitis are also increasing rapidly.
“I try so that there is no illness in my family,” says Rania. “We think we could lose someone close to us at any time and we are afraid. »
Communications
Without electricity, Rania’s phone call with Tel Aviv Tribune required careful preparation, involving an hour’s walk to the nearest UNRWA school to charge her phone. Once the connection was established, it repeatedly threatened to break.
This is nothing unusual these days – it sometimes takes Rania dozens of attempts to reach her ailing mother and father, who joined the family in Deir el-Balah when she left for Rafah, said Rania to Tel Aviv Tribune.
Right now, the internet is typically only available for 10 minutes at a time. Rania’s children, Rana and Mohammed, both 22, feel like their dreams have been shattered, their world now reduced to a single room in a war zone, with no way to properly communicate with the world outside.
Rana was about to graduate as a dentist, while Mohammed was studying software engineering.
“I tell them to find other places they can end up outside of Gaza, but they ask how they can do that. They don’t even have access to the internet to search for universities,” says Rania. In any case, she wonders if they would be accepted anywhere without certification.
Since the start of the war on October 7, Gaza has suffered repeated telephone and internet outages due to strikes on telecommunications infrastructure, deliberate closures and power cuts.
Under blockade for 16 years, the enclave has often been compared to an open-air prison, even before the war.
As the new year dawns, Rania, Hazem and the twins pray for peace. Right now, the only certainty Rania has is that she will not leave Gaza – at a time when many Israeli politicians have suggested that Gaza’s population move to Egypt’s Sinai desert. Egypt rejected the proposal.
Rania’s sister Aya, who also shared the room in Rafah, stayed as long as she could in Gaza City, only to be forced to leave with her husband and their son, all waving white flags and their identity papers so as not to be shot while walking south. An uncle who remained behind was killed by the bombs.
Rania doesn’t even know if the family home, with its beloved garden filled with lemon, mango and guava trees, is still standing. But, she says, she is ready to live in a tent amid the rubble of the destroyed city. “Every day my children ask me when we are going to return to Gaza City,” she says. “Why would we go to Sinai? Sinai is a desert.
“If Gaza is also a desert, I prefer to go back and rebuild it. »