After weeks of running from house to house in search of safety that never came, Kayed Hammad, 60, has resigned himself to staying in northern Gaza, even if that means eating legumes soaked in water because there is no Butane gas is used to cook them. “I don’t want to go south. I will not repeat in 2023 what my parents did in 1948. I'd rather die here. Plus, people are dying on the way south,” he says in voice messages that he records when he can charge his cell phone and the internet doesn’t go out.
He speaks from Gaza's largest refugee camp, Jabalia. His parents ended up there after the Nakba, the flight and expulsion of around 750,000 Palestinians during the first Arab-Israeli war 75 years ago. And that's where the images of mass arrests of Palestinians emerge. It is also the site of door-to-door fighting, such as the battle in which Hamas militants killed nine Israeli soldiers on Tuesday – the second deadliest ambush of the war. Although the Israeli army has been busily attacking southern Gaza since the end of the ceasefire on December 1, it has another foothold in the north, where it is intensively bombing Jabalia and Shuyaia, a neighborhood in Gaza City, the capital.
The north – where only one hospital is in operation and the Israeli army has just invaded another and blown up a UN school – is a succession of uninhabitable or destroyed houses, plains of rubble and rocket craters. It is a desolate landscape left after two months of Israeli bombing, the intensity of which has not been seen in decades, aerial and ground images show. In October, Israel ordered the 1.1 million residents in the north to move south. The vast majority eventually left. Nobody knows how many remained there. The United Nations dare not estimate the number because chaos reigns and the Israeli army keeps the north isolated. At least tens of thousands of people live in UN shelters and in the homes of relatives in the north. Without humanitarian aid – which Israel limits to the southern Gaza Strip – their lives are a daily odyssey in search of food, water and shelter.
“We don’t look for food. You can't really call it that. You have some bread and are looking for a sauce. Or a can of prickly pear or beans. We'll do anything to stay alive. “We often left uncooked beans in water with a little salt and pepper so they could be eaten the next day,” says Hammad. Cooking them would require butane gas, which is now a precious commodity. “I was amused when I had a boyfriend [from abroad] told me, “You have to boil the water to prevent illness,” and I thought, “Either we don't have butane or we just have enough to cook or to warm up a little.” “People started lighting wood to to make a fire.”
Palestinians flee the northern Gaza Strip during an Israeli attack on November 24.MAHMUD HAMS (AFP)
The week-long ceasefire at the end of November gave Gaza a brief respite. Not only because there were no bombings, but also because dozens of trucks carrying humanitarian aid were allowed to pass through the Israeli military checkpoint that separates the two parts of the Gaza Strip for the first time. “They say flour came in, but I didn’t get anything,” he says. Hammad says he found a kilo in a store and mixed it with water to try to make bread in a frying pan.
With the shops half empty, all that's left are vegetables, bread, rice and canned goods – the products of a subsistence economy. “The water is not drinkable and there is less and less food,” he complains. Many Gazans are dipping into their savings – it is common in the enclave to keep some of their money in cash, sometimes in dollars or Jordanian dinars. “Which was worth four shekels [the equivalent of one dollar] is now worth 20 or 25. Everyone has increased prices due to the shortage of products.”
Waiting nine hours to get bread
As food becomes scarce, people in the Gaza Strip are risking their lives to avoid starvation. “You have to wait until the bombing calms down. In the end you had to wait eight or nine hours to get bread. And when you get there, there's nothing left. They also bombed the bakeries,” says Hammad.
Hammad feels almost privileged because one of his nephews installed solar panels for his company, so there is electricity in his brother's house, where he ended up with his wife and children. Others in Jabalia, where it has been raining for days and the temperature has dropped to 13°C, are less fortunate. Images from the city show displaced families in tents flooded with water and mud.
Before reaching Jabalia, Hammad visited four different houses in the capital. His home no longer exists. It was destroyed in the bombing. The same thing happened during Israel's Operation Cast Lead (2008-2009) and in 2003 during the Second Intifada, when his workshop and car were also destroyed.
For four days I “didn’t feel any danger.” Then rockets hit nearby towers and he decided to flee at night to his sister's house in another neighborhood. Two nights later, the sound of the bombs grew closer and he moved to a cousin's house. “We only stayed one night because it felt like the bombs were practically falling on our heads,” he remembers. After two more nights with a brother-in-law, he found some stability at his wife's uncle's house, near Al-Shifa Hospital. “I wanted to see the people [the thousands of displaced] who was there. They lived in the same conditions as 200 years ago. They slept on the floor. Even the children who were given milk mixed with water, which is not even fit for an animal,” he recalls. He stayed until mid-November, when Israeli troops surrounded the hospital and took control. He then returned to his hometown Jabalia.
In three months, he has gone from planning a trip to Spain – where he lived in the 1990s – to struggling to find his way in the present, to worrying about the future – Israel intends to start the war in its current one Form to be extended at least until February. “What awaits me when the war is over? Life on the street: no money, no job, no house, no furniture, no clothes… nothing at all,” he says.
Are you at home?
The mayor of Gaza City, Yahya Sarraj, is also still in the north. He explains that many families are crammed into houses that are only a few square meters in size. Some of them used to live in buildings that are now destroyed. Others come from houses that are still standing but have lost their exterior walls or windows, allowing the cold to creep in. “Here the community is used to supporting each other in difficult times. A small house now offers space for several families. To make it easier, they sometimes separate women and children in one room; and men and boys, in another. Each one can fit about ten or more people,” says Sarray, who was appointed mayor by the Hamas government in 2019.
The search for the essentials is part of everyday survival. “People spend a lot of time looking for water. They fill large plastic drums and carry them for long periods of time to their home or wherever you can call it a home or refuge.” It is the same process to refill a butane bottle. “There is very little. Sometimes they wait for hours until they finally come back just a little.” Due to the lack of fuel, hardly anyone can transport them by car. At the request of the USA, Israel only allows limited quantities of fuel into the south. “So people are either walking or biking or carting,” he points out.
Many people are in emergency shelters such as schools, public places or churches (in Gaza City there is a small Christian community of about 1,000 people), he explains. “But these places are not completely safe either. And they don't have enough bathrooms or hot water. And when someone gets sick, it is very difficult for them to find somewhere to go,” he adds.
At one time, people might have thought about taking the sick to Al-Awda Hospital in Jabalia, but Israeli troops have surrounded it since December 5 and two health workers have already died, according to the World Health Organization. The center houses approximately 250 people (including patients, staff and displaced persons) who do not dare to leave the center. One of them, Mohamed Salha, says in a voice message that the Israeli snipers are shooting at the windows and that is why they are moving into the basements and interior corridors. In the hospital, he says, there is still the body of a person who was killed on the first day of the siege. “It's a woman who accompanied her sister-in-law to the maternity ward,” says Salha, who takes his messages in the most protected part of the hospital and anxiously goes upstairs to send them.
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