‘We held out until our last breath’: Palestinians fleeing the north arrive in Gaza City’s first refugee camp
Displaced Palestinians from northern Gaza set up tents at Yarmouk Stadium in Gaza City, 5 November 2024
Tareq S. Hajjaj reports in Mondoweiss on 7 November 2024:
Hundreds of families gather in Yarmouk Stadium, west of Gaza City. The large stadium’s field is now the site of the first refugee camp to be established in the city, named “Gaza Village.”
Children, women, and men carrying their belongings as they flee the Israeli extermination campaign in north Gaza are streaming into the stadium hoping to find a tent.
The camp was established on October 28, over a year into the Gaza genocide, and currently includes 250 tents. It was not set up by UNRWA, the agency responsible for Palestinian refugees, but through charitable organizations and individuals under the auspices of the Ministry of Development in the Gaza Strip.
The number of displaced people arriving from the northern Gaza Strip has exceeded the camp’s capacity, and not everyone there has a tent. Many families have been sleeping on the stadium’s stands and on the ground, waiting for more tents to arrive.
“The camp was quickly established in response to the displacement of thousands of citizens from north Gaza,” Muhammad Saada, deputy director of the displacement center, tells Mondoweiss. “More than 350 families have arrived from the north, so there aren’t enough tents to accommodate them.”
“The camp relies on individual initiatives and charitable organizations that coordinate with the Ministry of Development, which is the main sponsor of this camp,” he says, emphasizing that these initiatives provide food for the displaced but are neither enough nor ongoing.
The need for food and drinking water is very urgent in the camp, says Saada. “We need to establish a new camp and direct people to it because our number cannot bear an increase. We don’t have any more vacant places. We need new camps.”