Israel's invasion of Rafah enters its third week, with hundreds of thousands of people fleeing southern Gaza city facing dire conditions in new encampments and shelters.
Gazans say a lack of food, clean water and sanitation makes migration a particularly harrowing experience, and price gouging makes travel unaffordable for people in need of transportation, including the elderly and people with disabilities. It is said that it is now out of reach.
“We are facing a terrible situation,” said Khalil el-Halabi, a former U.N. official in his 70s who left Rafah last week for al-Mawasi, a seaside area that Israel has declared a “humanitarian zone.” said.
“We don't have what we need,” Halabi said. “We can hardly even find water.”
More than 800,000 people have left Rafah in the past two weeks, United Nations officials said Monday. On the same day, the Israeli military announced that more than 950,000 civilians in the city had been relocated since issuing an expanded evacuation order. A military spokesman said about 300,000 to 400,000 civilians remained on the ground.
The latest wave of displacement in Gaza began on May 6, when Israel issued an evacuation order and launched a military operation in eastern Rafah, along the border with Egypt. More than half of the enclave's civilian population had taken refuge in the city, most after fleeing multiple battles elsewhere in Gaza.
Wheelchair basketball player Ali Jebril, 27, said he and his family paid $600 to take 35 people by bus from eastern Rafah to Khan Younis earlier this month.
Jebril said the area along the sandy beach where many people had been resettled was not accessible in a wheelchair, so he was moved to a tent on the grounds of a hospital in Khan Yunis.
“We are not living a dignified life,” he said. “We are facing a catastrophe.”
He said the war had made him feel like a burden on society and he began to frequently ask others for help.
Since Israel's invasion of Rafah, the city's once overcrowded shelters and tent villages have been largely empty, U.N. humanitarian affairs official Edem Wosornu told the Security Council on Monday. People are moving to areas near Khan Younis and Deir al-Balah and setting up makeshift camps without sanitation, water, drainage or shelter, she said.
“We described it as a catastrophe, a nightmare, a hell on earth,” Ms Wasorne said. “It's all that and worse.”
Three-quarters of Gaza's population has been displaced since the war began in October, with many people having been moved four or five times, she said.
Israel has issued the order as a humanitarian measure to protect civilians ahead of further military action and says it is necessary to root out Hamas fighters in southern Gaza, but aid groups say further displacement is worsening an already devastating humanitarian situation.
The U.N. Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs said in its latest update that people were living in clusters of 500 to 700 tents, many made of blankets, nylon and other available materials. The report said some tents were set up on unstable coastal slopes, allowing waste from higher areas to fall over the dwellings and down the slope into the sea.
Halabi said food was available at the market, but the family was so cash-strapped that it was difficult to pay for it.
“After seven months of war, we have almost nothing,” he said.
Although the number of commercial trucks entering the Gaza Strip has increased recently, aid reaching the south through the Kerem Shalom and Rafah checkpoints has largely stopped. UNRWA, the main UN agency providing aid to Palestine, said just 69 aid trucks passed through the two checkpoints in the 16 days to Tuesday, the lowest rate since the first weeks of the war. Stated.
Philippe Lazzarini, head of the United Nations' lead agency for Palestinians, said in a social media post that the relocation carries risks and comes at great cost.
“Each time, they are forced to leave behind the few possessions they cannot carry or pay for transport, such as mattresses, tents, cooking utensils, and basic necessities.” he wrote. “Every time they have to start over.”