At night, amid heavy rain and falling temperatures, Heba and Ehab Ahmad hugged their two youngest children, relying on their body heat and a thin blanket to keep them warm as the water and Gusts of wind blew through the holes in their makeshift tent.
“We have nothing to keep us warm and dry,” Ms Ahmad, 36, said. “We live in conditions that I could never have imagined possible in my entire life.”
The Ahmad family is among 1.9 million Gazans who the United Nations says have been displaced since Israel began its relentless bombing campaign and expanded its ground operations in retaliation for Hamas’ attacks on Israel on July 7. october.
They arrived in the Al-Mawasi neighborhood in southern Gaza three weeks ago, just as winter was setting in. The family of seven took shelter in a small, flimsy tent they built with expensive nylon sheets and a few wooden planks, said Mr. Ahmad, 45. They share it with 16 other members of their family, he added.
“It’s not even a real tent,” he said jokingly. “Those who live in real tents are the bourgeois of Gaza. »
During the day, Mr. Ahmad said, he and his older sons try to find firewood and cardboard to keep a small fire going, which they use for cooking and warmth. “I am speaking to you while the smoke from the fire blinds me,” Mr. 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 United Nations and other rights groups have expressed growing concerns in recent days about the spread of water-borne diseases like cholera and chronic diarrhea in Gaza, due to a lack of clean water and unsanitary conditions. Children are most seriously affected by rising rates of infectious diseases, according to UNICEF.
Mr. and Mrs. Ahmad’s only daughter and youngest child, Jana, 9, had been suffering from severe abdominal pain for nearly two weeks, likely due to extreme dehydration, Mr. Ahmad said. He said he has been unable to take her to a hospital or clinic because the few medical centers that remain functional are completely overwhelmed and difficult to reach on foot.
“She is screaming in pain and all we can do is give her some rainwater to drink,” Mr Ahmad said.
The weather was hot when the Ahmads and their five children first fled their home in the northeastern town of Beit Hanoun at the start of the war. Like many others, Ms. Ahmad said, they had not expected to be gone for so long and had escaped with only a few documents and the summer clothes on their backs.
“I used to go looking for warm clothes at second-hand markets,” Mr. Ahmad said, “but they sell them at crazy prices that I can’t afford. »
“For 23 days we have been trying to find blankets and mattresses,” Mr Ahmad said. “We sleep on a thin sheet and shape the sand into a kind of pillow to rest our heads on.”
This week, the Integrated Food Security Classification, an international partnership of humanitarian organizations, classified the entire population of Gaza as being 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 eat whatever they can find, mostly wild leafy greens, Mr. 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.
There is, however, a positive side to rainy weather: a short break from the family’s daily struggle to find water.
They placed a bucket outside their tent to collect rainwater, which they used for cooking, washing themselves and their clothes.
“It’s still contaminated water,” Mr. Ahmad said, “but we have no other alternative. “We have to adapt.”
Ameera Harouda contributed reporting from Doha, Qatar.
