Deir ez-Zor Barah, Gaza Strip —
The tent camp stretches for more than 10 miles along Gaza's coast, filling beaches and spilling into vacant lots, fields and city streets: Families dig ditches to use as toilets, fathers search for food and water, children dig through trash and ruined buildings for wood and cardboard that their mothers can burn for cooking.
Israel's offensive against Rafah over the past three weeks has forced nearly a million Palestinians to flee the southern Gaza city and scatter it over a wide area. Most have already fled multiple times during Israel's nearly eight-month war on Gaza, which was aimed at destroying Hamas but has left the Strip in ruins and caused what the United Nations has described as near-famine conditions.
The situation has been made worse by a dramatic reduction in the amount of food, fuel and other supplies distributed to residents by the United Nations and other aid agencies, leaving Palestinians largely on their own to resettle their families and secure the basics they need to survive.
“The situation is dire. There are 20 people in the tent, no clean water, no electricity. We have nothing,” said Mohammed Abu Radwan, a teacher who lives in a tent with his wife, six children and other relatives.
“Words can't describe what it feels like to be constantly displaced, to lose loved ones,” he said. “All of this destroys our spirits.”
Abu Radwan fled Rafah on May 6, as soon as Israeli forces began their offensive against the city and artillery fire began closing in on his home. Radwan and three other families paid $1,000 to rent a donkey cart and traveled about 3.6 miles to the outskirts of Khan Younis. There, they spent the day outside gathering materials to build a makeshift tent. They dug a trench next to their tent for a toilet and hung blankets and old clothes for privacy.
Families typically have to buy their own wood and tarps for tents, which can cost as much as $500, not including ropes, nails and transportation costs for the materials, according to the humanitarian organization Mercy Corps.
Israeli authorities, who control all entry and exit points to the Gaza Strip, have allowed more civilian commercial trucks into the strip, according to U.N. and aid sources, and Palestinians say there are more fruits and vegetables in markets, and some prices have fallen.
Still, most homeless Palestinians can't afford it. Many Gaza residents haven't received a salary in months and their savings are depleted. With so little cash in the territory, those who have money in banks often can't withdraw it. Many turn to black-market money exchanges, which charge fees of up to 20 percent for transfers from bank accounts.
Meanwhile, humanitarian convoys carrying supplies distributed free by the UN and other aid groups have fallen to their lowest levels of the war, the UN has said.
The UN previously received several hundred trucks a day. Since May 6, that number has fallen to an average of 53 trucks a day, according to the latest figures released Friday by the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA). USAID says about 600 trucks a day are needed to stave off famine.
Most of the aid delivered to Gaza over the past three weeks has come from Israel through two checkpoints in the north of the strip and a US-built floating dock for sea transport. The two main checkpoints in the south, Egypt's Rafah checkpoint and Israel's Kerem Shalom checkpoint, are either not operational or barely accessible to the UN due to fighting nearby. Israel allows hundreds of trucks to pass through the Kerem Shalom checkpoint, but the UN has only been able to collect about 170 on the Gaza side over the past three weeks because they have been unable to reach the checkpoint.
According to OCHA, fuel flows have fallen to about one-third of what they were before the attacks on Rafah, and the reduced fuel needs to be used to keep hospitals, bakeries, water pumps and aid trucks running.
“We're running out of fuel for trucks, which is making it difficult to distribute the supplies we've brought in to those in need,” said Steve Fake, a spokesman for the US humanitarian group Anera.
Most of the people fleeing Rafah are finding themselves in an Israeli-declared humanitarian zone centered around the mostly barren coastal town of Muwasi, which has expanded north and east, reaching the edges of Khan Yunis and the central town of Deir al-Baraf, both of which are also overflowing with people.
“As far as we can see, there is nothing 'humanitarian' in these areas,” said Suze van Megen, head of Gaza operations for the Norwegian Refugee Council, which has staff in Mwasi.
Most of the humanitarian zones have no charity kitchens or food markets, and no functioning hospitals. Mercy Corps said they have only a few field hospitals and small medical tents that can't handle emergencies, and they only distribute painkillers and antibiotics if they have them in stock. “It's only a matter of time before people start suffering greatly from lack of food,” the group said.
The Mwashi area is mostly coastal sand dunes with no running water or sewer systems, and human waste and piles of garbage near tents have left many people suffering from hepatitis, gastrointestinal illnesses including diarrhea, skin allergies and lice, Mercy Corps said.
One aid worker who fled Rafah said he was lucky to be able to afford to rent a house in Deir al-Balah, but spoke on condition of anonymity as his organization was not authorized to speak, saying the town was so full of tents that “you can't even walk.”
Many of the people he sees on the streets are yellow in the face from jaundice and hepatitis, and “the stench is terrible” from the sewage and garbage piles.
Israel says the strikes in Rafah are crucial to its war objective of destroying Hamas in the Gaza Strip after an Oct. 7 Hamas attack killed about 1,200 people and kidnapped about 250 from southern Israel. That attack sparked Israeli military operations in the Gaza Strip that have killed about 36,000 people, according to the Gaza Health Ministry.
Aid groups have warned for months that attacks on Rafah would worsen Gaza's humanitarian disaster. So far, Israel's operations have stopped short of a planned all-out invasion, but fighting has spread from eastern Rafah into the city center over the past three weeks. Sunday's attack hit a tent camp in western Rafah, sparking a massive fire that killed at least 45 people, health officials said. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu acknowledged a “tragic mistake” had been made.
Satellite images taken by Planet Labs PBC on May 24 from shelters displaced by the attacks show new tent camps clustered together along the coast from just north of Rafah to the outskirts of Deliver. The ramshackle tents and shelters are crammed into a maze of corrugated metal sheets, plastic sheets, blankets and bedsheets draped over wooden poles for privacy.
Tamer Sayed Abul Khair leaves every day at 6 a.m. to look for water, usually returning around noon to the tent on the outskirts of Khan Younis where he and nearly 20 relatives live. His three children, aged between four and 10, are always sick, he said, but he has to send them outside to collect firewood for cooking fires. But he worries that unexploded ordnance may be scattered among their destroyed homes.
His elderly father has difficulty moving and has to use a bucket to relieve himself, and Abu El Kheil must regularly transport him to the nearest hospital for kidney dialysis.
“Firewood costs money, water costs money, everything costs money,” said his wife, Leena Aboul-Kheil, as she broke down in tears. “I'm scared that one day I'll wake up and find that I've lost my children, my mother, my husband, my family.”
Shurafa, Magdy and Keith are Associated Press writers. Magdy and Keith reported from Cairo. AP correspondent Sara El Deeb in Beirut, Fatma Khaled in Cairo and AP correspondent Mohamed Jajou in Mwasi, Gaza Strip, contributed to this report.
