Weeks after Israel curtailed its massive offensive on Gaza, thousands remain homeless, including children, sheltering in fragile tents in the brutal winter, writes Saleh Al-Naami
When heavy rain poured into the tent and awakened her, 38-year-old Hanan Al-Attar rushed out in a state of hysteria with her three children. Her husband Ahmed pulled at the tent poles, trying to secure them after fierce winds had knocked them over, and her oldest son filled bags with sand, placing them along the sides of the tent in a desperate attempt to keep it from collapsing. Hanan took refuge with her shivering children in the first house she came across.
The situation this family was in late last week was shared by most of the other families living in Al-Karama Camp, near Beit Lahiya in the northern Gaza Strip. The camp is composed of tents that families erected after the Israeli army destroyed their homes in the Al-Atatira and Al-Salatin areas during the recent war on Gaza.
Some of those left out in the cold, in particular children, had their health compromised as a result, suffering from fatigue, diarrhoea and stomach aches. Aisha, a 33-year-old widow whose husband was killed by occupation soldiers in 2007, says she is still treating her children for severe colds in the health clinic of Beit Lahiya. The main problem facing camp residents is a lack of warm covers, since charitable organisations that distributed blankets there did not provide enough for all families. Silman Khalil, 66, told the Weekly that his family consists of 10 members but that they only received five blankets. Many of the camp's families tried to find blankets among their homes' ruins, but most failed, either because their belongings were incinerated or because what remains is trapped under blocks of crumbled walls.
Camp residents do not show much enthusiasm for the aid offered by charitable organisations, for they are focussed on rebuilding their homes and dismantling the camp that has reawakened memories for some of leaving their original homes in 1948. Yet even those who found other houses to live in are feeling that their lives have been turned upside down.
Al-Ayad's three-storey house in which 10 people lived, and which cost him $150,000, was turned into rubble when three Hellfire missiles fired from an Israeli Apache helicopter hit it. By luck no one was home at the time and so the family was saved, but a woman in a neighbouring house was killed when she was struck by flying shrapnel. Abu Ali -- as Al-Ayad is called by his neighbours -- told the Weekly that his family spent several days in the only sports club in the village, and then one of his sisters invited them to stay with her since she has spare rooms. Abu Ali agreed, but soon realised that his family is just too large. He then rented an apartment belonging to his brother who lives abroad.
Al-Ayad's oldest son, Ali, is affected by their situation for reasons in addition to the destruction of their home and family belongings. Just a few days prior to the attack, Al-Ayad's parents were busy looking for a bride for him, since his father had finished building his linked apartment and fully equipping it. The building gone, Ali will no longer be able to marry. Yet this is a small sacrifice compared to the suffering of many others. "When I see or hear about people who were killed by their collapsing houses, I sense that God wanted me to keep my family," Abu Ali says.
Due to the immense damage wrought to nearby roads, the only way to reach the eastern neighbourhoods of Al-Qarara village in the central Gaza Strip and the town of Khazaa in the southeast is by donkey- drawn cart or by walking. Awad Sulaysil, who lives in Al-Qarara village and walks several kilometres each time he leaves, told the Weekly that the occupation army made a point of bulldozing the beginning of streets and crossroads so as to limit their use.
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