JERUSALEM – FROM OUR CORRESPONDENT
“We civilians in Gaza have not seen the Hamas guerrillas since the Israeli ground attack began. They are hidden, they fight, and then they disappear. You don’t meet anyone on the street anymore, not even at night. And that’s one of the reasons why Israeli statements that Hamas is still trying to block the escape from north to south make me smile. At first it was discouraged, but it was just a suggestion that I agree with, among other things: Hamas doesn’t have checkpoints, it doesn’t carry out checks, it’s just not there. I know this because I work in the area. And that absence has led to some dissatisfaction lately. Many of my friends wonder if it was really worth it. It is true that the October 7 attack has brought the Palestinian issue back to the center of Middle East politics, but now it is ordinary people, children and sick people in hospitals who are paying the price for the Israeli military’s revenge. “
Yesterday we managed to get back in touch with Fadi Abu Shammala, the director of the cultural centers in Gaza, an old acquaintance who we had already spoken to a few weeks ago. Immediately after the start of the war, he, his wife and three children left their home in the northern neighborhoods of Gaza City to join their father in Khan Younis in the center of the Gaza Strip. Yesterday he was in Rafah trying to reach Egypt, his cell phone was working again.
Without food
This is what he told us about the Nasser Hospital in Khan Younis, where his brother works. “All hospitals are on alert. Over 20,000 displaced people have found refuge in Nasser, in addition to those facing epidemics and infections, skin diseases are increasing due to poor hygiene. There is still electricity, it has not completely collapsed like Shifa in central Gaza. But there has been no food for at least 10 days. We can’t even find cans, we rely on the few vegetables the farmers can collect. However, the biggest problem remains overcrowding. Around 450,000 people lived in Khan Younis and the surrounding refugee camps, and over 900,000 have since been added. Too many, no one knows what to do. Those who can stay with friends and relatives, but the vast majority simply camp on the streets. Improvised toilets are being dug, simple holes in the ground. But no one washes, there is garbage everywhere, the smell is unbearable, there are huge black insects that I have never seen before. Doctors continue to speak of the danger of cholera, which is now increasing with the first rains.”
Fadi talks at length about the economics of survival. The costs have tripled and there is a black market for water. At first it looked as if people could wash in the sea. But he flatly denies this: “The Israelis are constantly raiding the beaches, they are deserted, and that’s a shame, because they could offer some kind of temporary refuge.” One of the most dangerous points is the Netzarim Passage, along the small Valley of the Wadi Azza, which divides the strip into two parts and where the Israelis push the fleeing masses south. “The soldiers are about a hundred meters away from where they placed their cameras. They want to filter out the displaced people in order to keep the guerrillas isolated in the northern part. Every now and then they shout through the megaphone with their hands raised for someone to stop and move away from their patrols. As if it were a mass selection: almost all those arrested never return. We already have thousands of people who have disappeared,” he explains.
The price of water
The water shortage remains very serious. There is no energy to bring the dirty to a boil, and the black market is growing even for the unfiltered. Today you pay 60 shekels (14.50 euros, ed.) for 1,000 liters, whereas you used to pay 40 for 5,000. Yesterday’s poor are today’s rich and vice versa. “If you had a new Mercedes, you don’t do anything with it, there’s no petrol. “Farmers with donkeys and carts, on the other hand, are doing a great job; they have become the new popular taxis that are in great demand,” he says. As for the thorny question of Hamas’s notoriety, he reiterates more forcefully what seemed like a limited phenomenon just a few days ago: “As the number of victims increases and the suffering continues, people are beginning to protest.” A few days ago I I saw a nurse at Shifah Hospital openly accuse Hamas of not taking into account the consequences of its October 7 raid. I saw that two bearded men then followed him, I don’t know what happened. I saw an old man on Salahaddin Street shouting: “Tell Ismail Haniyeh, who is in his golden exile in Qatar, and other Hamas leaders that I am Abu Hamza from the Shati refugee camp and I accuse them of being collaborators of the Hamas Being Israeli!” Just a few days ago something like this would have been unthinkable. But this dissatisfaction generally remains secret.”