A heat wave in the Gaza Strip has given a glimpse of a tough summer
The Dispute in Rafah: State of the State, the Situation, and the Security Status of the Palestinian Population as Revealed by the United Nations
The United Nations says more than a million Palestinians are sheltering in Rafah, a fourfold increase from the city’s prewar population and more than half of the Gaza Strip’s total population. Many people who were displaced crowded themselves into apartments or houses owned by their family or friends. People have been living in tents or other temporary structures for months.
Netanyahu approved the military’s plans for an attack on Rafah last month, but there is still no public announcement of a time frame.
Several recent developments, though, indicate the military may be laying the groundwork for its plans. Two reserve brigades were called up for duty in Gaza this week. Satellite images examined by NPR show several new tent encampments, which can hold thousands of people, have been erected this month in areas north of Rafah. Increased pressure on the city came about because of almost daily airstrikes over the last few weeks.
Israel says an offensive is necessary to eliminate Hamas and free the remaining 133 hostages taken captive in the Oct. 7 attack, most of whom are believed to be alive. In December of last year Israel freed two people from the Palestinian city of Rafah in an operation that killed scores of Palestinians.
He’s in an apartment with many other people. There are babies, elderly and ill people among them, he said. He said that relocating to a tent was painful due to the fact his wife is still breastfeeding their youngest child. He said that it’s one of the scariest things for them.
The talks are at an impasse and there’s concern that an assault will happen. There’s a “deep anxiety prevailing in the south about the possible, looming, upcoming military offensive, which seems to be back on the table,” Philippe Lazzarini, the head of the U.N. relief agency for Palestinians, said this week.
A senior Egyptian official told NPR that Israeli intelligence officials have indicated five areas in Rafah where they say tunnels and militant hideouts are present. The official spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss the sensitive nature of the discussions. The official disagreed with Israel’s claim of tunnels in those areas.
“Hamas should know that when the IDF [Israel Defense Forces] goes into Rafah, it would do best to raise its hands in surrender. The Israeli brigadier says that Rafah will not be the same today. The city would not have arms or hostages according to Gen Itzik Cohen, according to Kan.
What to Know about a Possible Israeli Military Offensive in Rafah? The United States Envoy for Middle East Humanitarian Issues
There are several officials with knowledge of the discussions worried about a high death toll among Palestinian civilians as Israel targets areas with suspected tunnels.
The U.S. has pressed Israel to pursue “alternate ways” of addressing a Hamas military presence in Rafah, said Ambassador David Satterfield, the U.S. special envoy for Middle East humanitarian issues.
There are other ways to deal with this. And if there is not a credible, executable humanitarian plan, then we cannot support a ground operation,” Satterfield told reporters Tuesday.
Egypt has denied having any dealings with Israel and reiterated its opposition to a Gazan offensive, as well as stating that it would “lead to massacres, massive human losses, and widespread destruction.”
The war has seen humanitarian groups and the U.N. agencies based their operations in Rafah. The only exit point for wounded Palestinians who can’t afford to leave, and the few who can afford expensive visas, is here. It’s also how aid workers and much of Gaza’s humanitarian aid enters.
Like most major aid groups, the Norwegian Refugee Council does not currently have set plans to evacuate, said Hadid. She said that they would try to stay and deliver to the displaced population as safe as possible, in the event that the offensive begins.
Several humanitarian organizations had already suspended operations in Gaza this month after an Israeli airstrike on a World Central Kitchen aid convoy killed seven of the organization’s workers.
A majority of organizations working in Rafah have contingency plans for an evacuation. There cannot be fully effective plans without more reliable information from Israel according to Joseph Kelly, director of the Association of International Development Agencies.
They are making a large amount of aid to the best of their ability. They’re looking at certain locations [north of Rafah] such as Al-Mawasi, Deir al-Balah and parts of Khan Younis where there’s some level of structural integrity to serve people that would eventually be pushed there,” he said.
The Israeli agency that deals with Palestinian affairs said it will notify aid groups in a reasonable amount of time, but the agency has not indicated how soon that warning will come.
Source: What to know about a possible Israeli military offensive in Rafah
The Fate of a Gaza Tent: A Palestinian Perspective from a People’s Journey During the War-Insurrection
Israel’s military hailed a March raid on the Al-Shifa hospital in Gaza as a model and said it had killed 200 people. Hundreds of bodies of people are still being recovered, many of them civilians, in the city, which is mostly rural these days compared with the nearby town of Rafah.
Hadi Al-Sayyed, who was displaced from his home in Gaza City and now lives in an unused storefront with his family, says people are slowly dying in Rafah and being targeted in airstrikes there too.
“When they tell us to go to any place, we will go, but only if they provide us with a place to live and provide water and food — not just throw us in the desert and tell us ‘survive,'” he says.
Al-Sayyed says people’s patience has run out. He says that militant groups could try to regroup in Gaza City where Israeli tanks have cut off access because people might attempt to reach the border fence with Egypt.
Reporting was done in Tel Aviv, Israel by Becky Sullivan, as well as in the United Arab Emirates, the Gaza Strip, and Amman, Jordan. The additional reporting from the people who are currently in Tel Aviv, Cairo, and Washington, D.C.
There is a Gaza Strip. For two sweltering days this week, as temperatures topped 100 degrees Fahrenheit, Mohammad Ayash’s tent had become unbearable — so hot, he said, it was like “hell fire.”
Like thousands of other Palestinians, Ayash and his family lived for months in a tent after leaving their home during the Israeli military campaign.
But the tent Ayash erected — a modest triangle built against a cinder block wall, its outer walls made of blankets and cloth — was meant for the cold, rainy nights of a Gaza winter, he said. To keep him and his family dry, he had lined the tent walls with plastic, the sheets held in place by wooden boards nailed together.
In this week’s heat, he said, wiping the sweat from his brow, it was even hotter inside the tent than outside. “The kids are falling apart. He said they can’t stay inside the tents. “We want to remove the nylon from it, God willing.”
By Friday, the two-day heat wave had broken, and temperatures had returned to the 70s. A preview of the summer to come was served by the high heat, which will weigh daily on every facet of life in the besieged Gaza Strip.
With the hot summer and high temperature, it’s creating an atmosphere for germs and pollution. And of course, this is the main driver for waterborne diseases and airborne disease,” warned Abdelrahman Al Tamimi, the director-general of the Palestinian Hydrology Group, a nonprofit that focuses on water and health issues in the Palestinian territories.
A Palestinian woman died of heatstroke, a person with the global relief group said to NPR. Lara al-Sayigh, 18, had received word that she would be allowed to exit Gaza, said Mahmoud Khwaider, the aid worker and al-Sayigh’s neighbor. But she passed out from the heat and died before she could reach the border station at Rafah, Khwaider said.
Gaza’s homeless residents have not been displaced since October 7: A 100-degree heat wave in Gaza offers a sweltering glimpse of a tough summer to come
A doctor at a field hospital Thursday ran a solution over the eyes of two young girls who had their eyes burn from medication that had run from their hair onto their eyes due to heat and sweat.
More than a million Palestinians have taken shelter here, the United Nations says, as Israel’s punishing military campaign forced people to flee from their homes further north.
“We did not expect to be in a position where we are sitting until May and June”, said the man who left his home in Gaza’s northeastern city of Beit Hanoun after October 7.
The Israeli military’s campaign has displaced over a million people in Gaza since it began on October 7. More than 34,000 Palestinians have been killed in the last month.
Many left their homes with barely more than what they were wearing, let alone a full complement of winter and summer clothes. Most have been displaced multiple times, including Abu Odeh, who said he has moved four times since October.
“May God send down a little mercy from himself to cool the weather,” Abu Odeh said. “I don’t believe anyone other than the residents of the Gaza Strip — no one in the world — is living the life we are currently suffering from.”
The aid worker with the earliest start could finish their work before the heat rose in the afternoon. Those who work at the border crossings where aid enters Gaza daily, worked through the heat.
“Everybody’s a little slower. Scott Anderson, UNRWA’s deputy director of operations in Gaza said that there is a lack of water in the area. It can impact everything because it’s so hot and there is no shade.
For the summer to come, UNRWA said it will look into the possibility of opening the crossings earlier in the day — as soon as there is daylight — in order to take a safety break during the afternoon.
Source: A 100-degree heat wave in Gaza offers a sweltering glimpse of a tough summer to come
Dances in the crowds: a story of Zakaria, a five-year-old boy whose swim in the Mediterranean Sea has made him happy
The small children gathered directly under the spigots and danced in the drops as adults above them filled their jugs. Women, in the privacy of their shelters, removed their hijabs to dip them in water before putting them on again. People relaxed in the shade along the rows of tents, hoping for a breeze.
And thousands flocked to the Mediterranean Sea to cool off — among them, a five-year-old boy named Zakaria, who told NPR that his swim in the ocean had made him happy.
He said that the summer would be worse. We don’t know what to do with our families. “We don’t know how to deal with this heat.” “We are frightened.”
