2024-01-16 10:04:06
Extreme cold and hunger increase the suffering of displacement in Gaza
In a tent of cloth and plastic set up in the open south of the city of Rafah, Ismail Nabhan sits with his children and grandchildren in front of a fire to get some warmth from the bitter cold, and the tent struggles with the strong winds in an attempt to withstand. Nabhan (60 years old) says: “Two days ago the winds were strong. We tried all night to fasten the nylon to the tent. We live in a desert, and the sea is in front of us. The cold is double.” The tent in which 28 people live emits a foul smell due to burning firewood and pieces of plastic, and choking smoke fills the place.
Raeda Awad, Ismail Nabhan’s wife, told Agence France-Presse: “The smoke we inhale from burning plastic burns our chests.” The tent of the family that was displaced from the center of the Gaza Strip is one of thousands of displaced persons’ tents created in the south of the besieged Strip. It is hundreds of meters away from the shore of the Mediterranean Sea, in the far southwest of the city of Rafah, near the border with Egypt.”
Beside her, her grandson coughs. Raeda (50 years old) says: “All the children are sick from the smell and the cold. They do not stop coughing and runny noses. The clothes are not heavy enough to keep them warm.” She added: “The covers are barely enough. Every three people share one blanket.”
Palestinian women displaced by the war overlook a camp for displaced people west of Rafah, south of the Gaza Strip, on the border with Egypt (AFP)
“We will die from the cold.”
Raida asks her son Hatem to bring some firewood. She says: “The firewood is wet. We will need four days to dry it, enough for a day or two to heat and cook for thirty people.” “The situation is tragic.”
The war broke out between Israel and Hamas following an attack launched by the movement inside the Hebrew state on October 7. Israel vowed to “eliminate” Hamas, and has since launched a devastating bombing campaign and ground operation since October 27, causing the deaths of 24,100 people, most of them women, boys and children, according to the Hamas Ministry of Health.
According to the United Nations, the number of displaced people in the Gaza Strip today is 1.9 million out of 2.4 million, the number of the Strip’s population before the war. A joint statement by the World Health Organization, the International Food Program and the United Nations Children’s Fund confirmed on Sunday that there is an “urgent need” in the Gaza Strip for “a radical change in the flow of humanitarian aid.” He called for securing “safer and faster” supply routes, warning that the current level of aid is “far below what is needed to avoid a deadly combination of hunger, malnutrition and disease.”
The United Nations Humanitarian Aid Agency (OCHA) said in its report that the shortage includes “one million and 200 thousand blankets and mattresses, at least 50 thousand family tents prepared for the winter and 200 thousand pieces of winter clothing, in addition to tarpaulins and plastic sheets.”
In Rafah, Muhammad Kahil, displaced from the northern Gaza Strip, says: “We have no food, water, or heating. “We are freezing to death.” Haneen Adwan (31 years old), a mother of six children, was displaced from the Nuseirat camp in the central Strip to Rafah. She says: “At night, I feel that we are going to die from the cold. We are all sick, suffering from colds and coughs.”
The war destroyed the Gaza Strip in unprecedented ways (Archyde.com)
Rain and storm
Adwan, whose tent is hundreds of meters from the sea, places three mattresses on top of each other to avoid the cold. She says: “There is no means of heating other than fire, but the price of firewood is high and we do not have money. We light fire with plastic, and we suffocate from the smell.” Next to her sits her son Fadi (14 years old), who is responsible for providing plastic to light the fire. Pointing to his hands, which were dyed black, the boy says: “I go there near the sewage ponds at the border. There is plastic underneath the sand. I dig every day and cut the plastic with a knife.”
He says, not caring regarding the wounds covering his hands as a result of this work: “My brothers die from the cold at night, and so do I. We must light something, otherwise we will freeze.”
In a nearby tent, Khaled Faraj Allah (36 years old) prepares bread for his family of six children, including a child with special needs. Faraj Allah, who was displaced from his home east of Gaza City, bakes loaves of bread in the corner of the tent and hands them to his son. He says: “After two in the morning, no one is able to sleep because of the extreme cold, even if a thousand blankets are placed. The ground is cold and the dirt transmits moisture and cold.”
The father struggles between lighting a fire to keep warm and his fear of bombing. He says: “Every night I light a fire inside the tent to keep warm, because I am afraid that Israeli aircraft will bomb us.” He added: “We have become obsessed that they (Israel) might be bombed for any reason.”
The father refers to his child, “Sanad,” with regret, and says: “He used to interact and laugh, but he became always silent and did not move, especially since he was sick all the time due to the cold and did not get any medication.”
Faraj fears rain and the Israeli invasion and says: “If it rains heavily, people will die from the cold, and if the Israelis invade the area, what will I do?” I will flee there for the sake of my children,” he said, pointing to the Egyptian border.
Children resting on bags of food aid from UNRWA in the Beach camp in Gaza (AFP)
Humanitarian aid
The World Health Organization, UNICEF, and the World Food Program called for the urgent, safe and adequate flow of humanitarian aid to the Gaza Strip, to avoid famine and the spread of deadly diseases. The heads of the UN agencies pointed to the urgent need for a radical change in the flow of aid quantities, by opening more roads and crossings, allowing a greater number of trucks to pass through border checkpoints every day, and lifting restrictions imposed on the movement of humanitarian workers and ensuring their safety.
They added in a joint statement that without the ability to produce or import food, the people of Gaza depend on aid to survive, and that the amounts of aid currently arriving in the Strip are not sufficient and do not meet the basic needs of the population and avoid hunger, malnutrition, poverty and disease, and that the lack of food and water Medical care is getting worse, especially in the north.
They criticized the multiple checks and inspections of trucks coming to Gaza, and the obstruction of their arrival, which puts the civilian population of the Strip at risk.
Director-General of the World Health Organization, Tedros Adhanom, said that people in Gaza are suffering from hunger, thirst, and a lack of medical care, and that the spread of famine in the Strip will make the situation catastrophic, calling for safe and unimpeded access to aid, and a ceasefire to prevent further death and suffering. Relief agencies need an Israeli permit to use a functioning port close to the Gaza Strip and border crossing points to the north, and access to the port of Ashdod, which is located regarding 40 kilometers away, would allow larger quantities of aid to be shipped to the north of the Strip.
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