by At night, amid heavy rain and falling temperatures, Heba and Ehab Ahmad held their two youngest children tightly, relying on their body heat and a thin blanket to keep them warm as the water and gusts of wind blew in. through the holes in their makeshift tent.
“We have nothing to keep us warm and dry,” said Ahmad, 36. “We live in conditions that I would never have imagined were possible in my life.”
The Ahmad family is among 1.9 million Gazans who, according to the United Nations, have been displaced since Israel began its relentless bombing campaign and expanded its ground operations in retaliation for the Hamas-led attacks on Israel on the 7th. October.
They arrived in the southern Gaza neighborhood of Al-Mawasi three weeks ago, just as winter was approaching. The family of seven took shelter in a small, flimsy tent they built from expensive nylon sheets and some wooden planks, said Ahmad, 45. They share it with 16 other relatives, he added.
“It’s not even a proper tent,” he said jokingly. “Those who stay in real tents are the bourgeois of Gaza.”
During the day, Ahmad said, he and his older children try to find firewood and cardboard to keep a small fire burning, which they use to cook and stay warm. “I am talking to you while the smoke from the fire blinds me,” Ahmad said in a telephone interview on Sunday. In the background someone could be heard coughing uncontrollably. “Smoke also damages our lungs,” he added.
The UN and other human rights groups have in recent days expressed growing concern about the further spread of waterborne diseases such as cholera and chronic diarrhea in Gaza, due to a lack of clean water and unsanitary conditions. Children have been the most severely affected by rising rates of infectious diseases, according to UNICEF.
Mr and Mrs Ahmad’s only daughter and youngest daughter, Jana, 9, had been suffering from severe abdominal pain for almost two weeks, possibly due to extreme dehydration, Mr Ahmad said. He said he has not been able to take her to a hospital or clinic because the few medical centers that are still operating are completely overwhelmed and difficult to reach on foot.
“He has been screaming in pain and all we can do is give him some rainwater to drink,” Ahmad said.
The weather was warm when the Ahmads and their five children first fled their home in the northeastern city of Beit Hanoun during the early days of the war. Like many others, Ahmad said, they did not anticipate being gone for so long and had fled with only a few documents and the summer clothes they were wearing.
“I’ve been looking for warm clothes at second-hand street markets,” Ahmad said, “but they sell them at incredible prices that I can’t afford.”
“For 23 days we have been trying to find blankets and mattresses,” Ahmad said. “We’ve been sleeping on a thin sheet and shaping the sand into a kind of pillow to rest our heads on.”
This week, the Integrated Food Security Phase Classification, an international association of aid organizations, classified the entire population of Gaza as in crisis in terms of access to food.
Like many other displaced families, the Ahmads, who have moved four times since the start of the war, have struggled to find food and water. They have been eating everything they could, mostly wild leafy greens, Ahmad said. He added that no help had reached them so far. Aid distribution has been complicated by fuel shortages, continued airstrikes and a host of other logistical challenges.
However, the rainy weather has a silver lining: a brief respite from the family’s daily struggle to find water.
They placed a bucket outside their tent to collect rainwater, which they used to cook and wash themselves and their clothes.
“It’s still contaminated water,” Ahmad said, “but we have no alternative. “We need to adapt.”
Ameera Harouda contributed reporting from Doha, Qatar.
