DEIR AL-BALAH: For Gaza’s people, the hardships of life in the state’s spacious camp tents are compounded by the regular shame of not having protection.
People struggle to dress modestly in huts with men and extended family members, and with strangers who are only a few steps ahead in nearby tents. Because there are so few opportunities for menstrual goods, they cut up old garments or plates to use as cushions. Wooden restrooms typically consist of just a hole in the sand and bedding dangling from a line, and these must be shared with dozens of other people.
Alaa Hamami has addressed the modest problem by continually wearing her worship jacket, a black cloth covering her head and upper body.
” Our entire life have become worship garments, even to the market we wear it”, said the young mother of three. ” Dignity is gone”.
Usually, she would use the shawl just when performing her regular Muslim prayers. But because there are so many men near, she always has it on, even when she’s sleeping, just in case an Zionist strike strikes outside at night and she must flee quickly, she said.
Israel’s 14-month-old battle in Gaza has driven more than 90 % of its 2.3 million Palestinians from their homes. They are now residing in filthy shelters of tent shelters spread out over large areas, a total of hundreds of thousands.
Sewage runs into the pavements, and food and water are hard to obtain. Winter is beginning to arrive. Families frequently wear the same clothes for days because they abandoned some belongings and clothes with their belongings as they fled.
Everyone in the tents searches monthly for food, fresh water and wood. People feel continually exposed.
A liberal society has existed in Gaza for generations. Most women wear the hijab, or mind robe, in the presence of people who are not immediate community. Issues of women’s wellness- pregnancy, menstruation and contraceptives- tend not to get discussed formally.
” Before we had a ceiling. Here it does not occur”, said Hamami, whose worship jacket is torn and smudged with dust from cooking flames. ” Here, the government has seen our whole existence exposed. There is no protection for people”.
Even basic needs are hard to meet Wafaa Nasrallah, a relocated mother of two, says living in the camps makes even the simplest needs hard, like getting time pads, which she never afford. She attempted to use babies and other items that have gone up in price.
For a bath, she has a hole in the ground, surrounded by mats propped up by pieces.
The UN says more than 690, 000 women and girls in Gaza require menstrual health products, as well as clean water and restrooms. Help workers have been unable to fulfill need because supplies are accumulating at border crossings from Israel. Stocks of health products have run out, and costs are astronomical. Some people have to choose between purchasing food and water or purchasing cushions.
Doaa Hellis, a mother of three who resides in a tent, claims she has torn up her worn-out clothes to make periodic towels. ” Wherever we find material, we tear it up and use it”.
A bag of cushions costs 45 shekels ($ 12 ),” and there is no even five pounds in the whole tent”, she said.
Anera, a freedom group engaged in Gaza, says some people use birth control pills to end their intervals. Due to the stress and stress of repeated movement, many people’s processes have been hampered.
The horrible conditions pose real threats to children’s health, said Amal Seyam, the chairman of the Women’s Affairs Center in Gaza, which provides resources for girls and surveys them about their experiences.
Some people, according to her, haven’t changed their clothes in 40 days. That and improvised material pads” may undoubtedly make” skin diseases, diseases related to sexual health and psychological conditions, she said.
Imagine what a woman in Gaza feels like if she can’t control her menstrual cycle and hygiene habits, Seyam said.
Being a woman was once more of a joy and less of a burden, according to Hellis, who recalls an apocalyptic era when “everything is destroyed.”
” Women are now deprived of everything, no clothes, no bathroom. Their psychology is completely destroyed”, she said.
Seyam said the organization has tracked cases of girls who were married before they were 18 to escape the suffocating conditions of their families ‘ tents. The conflict will” continue to produce a humanitarian disaster in every way possible.” And women always pay the biggest price”, she said.
Israel’s campaign in Gaza has killed more than 45, 000 Palestinians, over half of them women and children, according to the territory’s Health Ministry. Its count does not distinguish between combatants and civilians.
Israel launched its assault in retaliation for the Oct. 7, 2023, attack by Hamas on southern Israel, in which militants killed some 1, 200 people and abducted around 250 others.
With large swaths of Gaza’s cities and towns leveled, women wrestle with reduced lives in their tents.
Hamami can walk in a few quick steps the length of her tiny tent. She and 13 members of her extended family also share it. During the war, she gave birth to a son, Ahmed, who is now 8 months old. Between caring for him and her two other children, washing her family’s laundry, cooking and waiting in line for water, she says there’s no time to care for herself.
She has a few items that give her a sense of what her previous life was, including a powder compact she brought with her when she fled Gaza City’s Shati camp. The makeup is now caked and crumbling. She was able to maintain control of a tiny mirror over the course of four different reversals over the year. It’s broken into two pieces, which she occasionally joins in order to catch a glimpse of her reflection.
” Previously, I had a wardrobe that contained everything I could wish for”, she said. ” We used to go out for a walk every day, go to wedding parties, go to parks, to malls, to buy everything we wanted”.
Women “lost their being and everything in this war”, she said. ” Women used to take good care of themselves before the war. Now everything is destroyed”.
