The latest news is that the rice has run out. This is another problem on top of all the ones we already have. I just came back from the bread snake, which wasn’t a snake after all. Imagine hundreds of people crowded together, screaming and shouting to get to a loaf of bread ahead of everyone else that isn’t enough for anyone. I am Mohammed, I am 40 years old, a wife and four sons. We changed refugee camps for five days. We are in Kytc Unrwa Camp, a refugee camp in the south, very close to the sea. We come from Gaza City, where nothing is left now. I don’t know if my house is still standing. We walked here with our families: there are 46 of us.
This time it’s different
The camp is gigantic, there are 45,000 displaced people. 45,000 Gazans (residents of Gaza, editor’s note) who have lost everything, even their dignity. I know I was born in a complicated country, I saw wars and bombings, but I couldn’t imagine what was happening. I never thought I would feel like an animal. They have reduced us to animals who stink, who don’t wash, who are hungry and fight over a crust of bread. Each of us has lost someone, a brother, a friend, a wife, a child. There’s nothing you can do, this time it’s different. I had never seen them bomb a hospital. It seems like the army is playing a video game and we are fake characters running away, not people. Bombs on mosques, schools, churches.
I think they feel free to do so because there is no one here who can witness the horror of this massacre. There is no international and independent press. There are the brave reporters from Gaza, but many have been killed. I lost six journalist friends during this month and ten days of war. Do you want to hear us condemn Hamas? We condemn Hamas. Are you asking us if they are terrorists for us? Ok, to us they are terrorists. But how do you justify killing our children and innocent civilians? Hamas cannot be the excuse for this injustice.
Never sure
They told us to come to the south to avoid getting bombs on our heads, but we get them here too. There is no safe place on the Strip. We know that once they are done with the north, they will do the same in other places, with the usual excuse: Hamas. They’re about to do it, they’re telling us they’re coming south.
But we want to stay in Gaza, where we were born. That’s why today we run away to save ourselves. A few months ago I was in Italy, it was suggested to move to you, it would be nice, but I’m from here and I love this godforsaken strip.
Gaza City has been hell for the last few weeks, but the refugee camp is a different kind of hell. We are walking zombies. We eat once a day, around five in the afternoon. Children cry because they are hungry. We give the little ones something to eat early in the morning when they wake up. The older ones understand the situation and try not to complain, but the one, two, three, four year olds protest. We adults eat as little as possible in order to leave what little we have for our children. We sleep outside so we can give them a roof, a tent to stay overnight. In the last few days it has been cold at night in Gaza and we get sick easily. We have gastroenteritis, bronchitis, spots on the skin. We can’t wash, the queue to go to the toilet lasts at least an hour. Even to get a bottle of water you have to queue. We spend our days waiting in line to live.
Bitter observation
The internet is slow. If so, we watch videos showing the Israeli army in action and write to our friends on WhatsApp to find out if they are still alive. A few days ago, a friend who lives far away asked me whether we feel abandoned by the international community. I told him no. We are used to not existing. When war broke out in Kiev, the whole world was rightly worried about the Ukrainians. We were too. Nobody ever worries about the people of Gaza, but we knew.
(Text collected by Greta Privitera)