Thousands of Palestinians who have fled Gaza have sought shelter in what was once the largest sports arena there, where people are surviving on small food or water as they try to stay one step ahead of Israel‘s most recent offensive.
Their wooden tents hug the color below the club’s chairs, with clothes hung in the July sunlight across the dusty, powdered- up soccer field. Um Bashar cleans a child standing in a plastic tub under the covered seats where gamers used to stay on the sidelines. He wobbles and shivers as she pours cold water over his nose while washing soap through the teen’s hair, and he grips the vinyl seats for stability.
They’ve been displaced many times, she said, most just from Israel’s renewed activities against Hamas in the Shijaiyah town of Gaza City.
” We woke up and found vehicles in front of the doorway”, she says. ” We did n’t take anything with us, not a mattress, not a pillow, not any clothes, not a thing. Not yet foods”.
She fled with about 70 others to Yarmouk Sports Stadium — a little under 2 miles ( 3 kilometers ) northwest of Shijaiyah, which was heavily bombed and largely emptied early in the war. Many of the individuals who ended up in the facility claim to have nothing to do with.
” We left our domiciles”, said one person, Hazem Abu Thoraya,” and all of our houses were bombed and burned, and all those around us were as well”.
Despite Israeli soldiers ‘ generally encircling and isolating it, hundreds of thousands of people have still lived in northern Gaza. However, support flows that have improved lately, and the U. N. said earlier this year that it is now able to meet women’s basic requirements in the northwest. Israel claims it allows support to provide Gaza and that it is unaware that the United Nations has done much to move it.
People claim that the poverty and uncertainty are putting an ever-increasing strain on them.
” There is no safe location. Security is with God”, said a displaced person, Um Ahmad. ” Fear is now felt not only among the children, but also among the adults…. We do n’t even feel safe walking in the street”.
