2023-11-13 01:40:44
At first he thought the war would end soon. Injured, with his house destroyed and forced to survive “25 days with nothing,” Yusef Mehna finally left, like thousands of others, for the southern Gaza Strip.
Sitting in trucks, crowded into cars, in donkey carts or on foot, thousands of Palestinians flee the incessant attacks by the Israeli army against the north of the small territory that lies between Israel, Egypt and the Mediterranean.
Mehna, who set out from Jabaliya in the northern Gaza Strip, hoped to reach Rafah, the last city before Egypt. But his journey came to a halt after 25 kilometers and eight hours of grueling travel.
“I already paid 500 shekels,” that is, about $129, “to get from Jabaliya and I don’t have any more money to continue,” the man, surrounded by his six children, tells AFP.
His sick wife is in a wheelchair, so they rent different “donkey carts, trucks or cars” for short distances. Few drivers accept long trips due to lack of fuel.
Sometimes it was necessary to walk, pushing her, he explains.
Around them, in Bani Suheila, east of Khan Yunes, there are hundreds of families with children waiting.
The Israeli army claims that this area is relatively safe, but on Sunday four bombs dropped by a plane destroyed a dozen houses.
The head of Gaza hospitals, Mohamed Zaqut, told AFP that there were “10 dead, including women and children.”
No bread
Almost one in two houses was destroyed or damaged in the Gaza Strip, where there are currently more than one and a half million displaced people, according to the UN. In three days, almost 200,000 people left the north for the south.
With this influx, rents that were around $150 a month are now offered between $500 and $1,000.
“Rent? I can’t even find bread to feed my children,” laments Um Yaqub, 42, who arrived in Jan Yunes three days ago with her husband and her seven children.
If access to bread is so difficult, it is because “the only mill in the Gaza Strip no longer works due to lack of electricity and fuel,” explains the UN.
On October 7, Hamas, in power in Gaza, launched an unprecedented attack on Israeli soil, killing 1,200 people, mostly civilians, and kidnapping more than 240, according to Israeli authorities.
Since then, Israel has bombed the Palestinian enclave, where more than 11,000 people, mainly civilians, have died, according to the Hamas Health Ministry.
Before the conflict, just over 80% of Gazans lived in poverty and almost two-thirds depended on international aid, according to UN data.
Hunger is not Yaqub’s only problem. “My husband has heart problems,” he says, and his 20-year-old daughter, Rim, “should be in an orthopedic bed.”
“But we all sleep on the floor, in the dust and we don’t even have a blanket even though it is very cold at night,” he emphasizes.
Her husband, Atef Abu Jarad, 47, remains in a classroom on the first floor of the school where the family camps with dozens of other displaced people.
“I don’t have a shekel to buy food for my children,” he says. In any case, the stores lack mineral water, infant milk, children’s diapers or dry pasta.
The displaced receive some food aid. “A portion of rice to share among seven…,” she summarizes.
As for water, you have to go get it from a tap where there is a long line of displaced people.
His daughter Rim had to give up the painkillers she has been taking since birth as she suffers from spinal and shoulder deformities.
“The pain prevents me from sleeping, but we can’t buy medicine,” she says, resigned, with a hungry stomach. Because her little brothers and sisters “need to feed.”
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