Some 90,000 Gazans have fled their homes seeking safer ground, writes Rory McCarthyin Jerusalem and Hazem Baloushain Gaza City
MUSTAFA IBRAHIM and his family stayed in their apartment for day after day of Israeli artillery and air strikes, but on Sunday morning, when tanks drew up a few hundred metres from their front door, he finally decided to flee.
He took his wife and seven children, the clothes they were wearing and as much water as he could carry, and they crossed into the centre of Gaza city. They moved in with his brother-in-law’s family in a small apartment rented just for the duration of the conflict. Now, for the first time in two weeks, they have electricity and took their first showers. They only go outside to buy food.
“We’re stressed all the time, trapped in this apartment,” said Ibrahim (45), who works at a small citizens’ rights group. “You can imagine what it’s like: all these children in a small apartment, with the loud sounds of shelling and air strikes. The children are screaming in their sleep at night.”
As many as 90,000 Gazans are believed to have fled their homes in the face of Israel’s devastating offensive, according to the al-Mezan human rights centre. Already the UN is running 31 shelters, mostly in its schools, for more than 25,000 people – a number that has climbed by 4,000 since Friday.
Particularly in the northern town of Jabaliya, a principal target of Israeli bombing, some shelters are overcrowded, and no more can be opened because of the poor security. As many as 1,900 people are in one school, with 1,700 in another, the UN says. They have water, bread and tinned meat, but there are shortages of blankets, mattresses and generators.
Tens of thousands more have moved in with friends or family, or rented apartments in the city centre where they hope they are safest. Ibrahim said the family waited until the last minute. “The night before we left, we didn’t sleep at all. There was heavy shelling, lots of gunfire. It was unbelievable. I was so scared for my children,” he said.
There are 14 of them in two rooms: his brother-in-law had fled his home in Beit Lahiya with his wife and three children at the start of the assault and found one of the few apartments left for rent in Gaza city. Prices are now at least $300 a month, far more than usual. “I’m very pessimistic about what comes next,” Ibrahim said.
Others have been so far unable to move. Saleh Kahlout (71) had an apartment with his wife, son Mahmoud and five grandchildren in Tel al-Zatar, in eastern Jabaliya. Early in the conflict their house was severely damaged by a shell. They moved into a relative’s house, where other members of the extended family had also gathered. Now there are 35 in three bedrooms and one living room. There is no regular electricity and they are rationing water: no showers, no washing clothes. “It’s not safe here, but it’s less risky,” Kahlout said. “I’m not going to leave here: we’ve got nowhere else to go. There’s no safe place in Gaza. It’s hard.
“We’re trying to minimise the meals, sometimes one a day, sometimes two.” They have no gas, just a kerosene stove.
Kahlout was a boy when the 1948 war forced his family to flee their home in a village, Na’aliya, in what is now Israel. They could never go back: two-thirds of Gaza’s 1.5 million people are refugees or descendants of refugees from 1948. “This conflict will go on, because the Israelis don’t want to end it,” he said.
“They don’t want the coming generation of Palestinians to demand their rights.”
Emad Abdul Jawad took his wife and four children out of their home in Tel al-Hawa at the start of the conflict, when he realised Hamas gunmen were firing rockets nearby. They moved in with his father, in the centre of Gaza city: 20 people in one apartment, with no electricity and limited water.
Jawad (38) is most worried about his home, which he built two years ago. "For eight years, I was working and saving. Now suddenly in one minute I'll lose it all if the house gets attacked. How can I build my children's future again? It's hard for me to think I might have lost everything, that this conflict finishes and I've got nothing left." – ( Guardian service)