‘Tents everywhere’ as Rafah struggles to hold a million Palestinians
Tents as far as the eye can see in the southern Gaza city of Rafah, 9 January 2024
Mohammed Zaanoun reports in +972 on 15 January 2024:
Around half of the Gaza Strip’s population — an estimated 1 million people — is now crammed into the small southern city of Rafah, near the border with Egypt. Before the war, the city and its surroundings housed less than 300,000 people, but hundreds of thousands more have arrived over the past three months from all over Gaza as a result of Israel’s expulsion orders and unceasing bombardment by ground and air.
Like the rest of Gaza, Rafah does not have enough food, water, medicine, or shelter to accommodate its permanent residents, let alone the vast number of people now seeking refuge in the city. Many families are sleeping in tents, if they can find one; if they can’t, they sleep on the streets. Very few are permitted to cross the border into Egypt. Nearly everyone is extremely hungry and cold.
I am currently staying in Rafah with my wife and four children for the second time since the war began. We left our home in the northwest of Gaza City on October 7; since then, we have repeatedly been forced to relocate as a result of Israeli airstrikes and expulsion orders, and I have twice pulled my children out from under the rubble.
The house of my in-laws in central Gaza City, where we first sought shelter after fleeing our home, was destroyed; the flat we subsequently rented in Rafah for around a month was severely damaged; and I later found out that our own home was also badly damaged and Israeli soldiers at one point used it as a base.