No fuel, no power, nowhere safe: life on streets of Gaza

As Israel expands its ground operations’, families struggle for food and shelter

- Hazem Balousha , Peter Beaumont 

In Gaza, the ever-present fear of sudden death has prompted mothers to write their children’s names on their legs and hips, to help with identifi cation if they are killed in an airstrike.

They have no control over the Israeli war waged against them, which is very much out of the 21st century – fought from the cockpits of jets and the control rooms of hi-tech naval ships. Yet, on the streets of southern Gaza, lives have been bombed back decades.

Families displaced from Gaza City and the cities farther north, which have borne the worst of the Israeli strikes, numbering several hundred a day, collect broken furniture and scrap wood to use as fuel for cooking. There is very little cooking gas. And without power or internet, many have abandoned phones and televisions, underlining an atmosphere of often brutal isolation. For those who have them, radios are their sole link to the outside. 

Fridges no longer work, and food and water-borne disease are daily anxieties - drinking water is rationed by families. Those who can find accommodation with friends and family crowd into their homes. Others have overwhelmed the UN-run schools used as shelters in times of war in Gaza, with more than 600,000 people converging on 150 schools.

Yet more internally displaced people have gathered in open areas around hospitals, believing them to be safer, with some families sleeping in their cars.