Al-Mawasi area, where IDP tents are spread, overlooking Egypt's Rafah (Al-Jazeera)
Gaza- "And still, O world, what is in hiding for us" (and we do not yet know what fate has in store for us), with these words, which circulate popularly on the lips of those who fear what awaits him, the Palestinian fifteenth Mithqal Bakr expresses his fears of the coming days, after he landed in the city of Rafah, the far south of the Gaza Strip, displaced for the fourth time, since he was forced to evacuate his home in Gaza City.
In a small, dilapidated tent, Bakr lives with his family in al-Mawasi, the nearest border point to the Strip with Egypt, southwest of Rafah, which is now home to about half of the territory's 2.3 million residents.
Local authorities in Gaza and international organizations estimate that 85% of Gazans have become displaced away from their homes and areas of residence, including about one million Palestinians who sought refuge in the city of Rafah, one of whom was Bakr, who was forced to be displaced repeatedly, in search of lost safety in a small geographical area where the occupation has not left a place where it has not been targeted by a rocket or shell since the outbreak of the war on the seventh of last October.
Displaced people
Bakr (50 years old) – Al Jazeera Net – says that he was forced to flee for the first time from his home in the Beach refugee camp west of Gaza City, and he and his family took refuge in the city's Shifa Hospital, and with the intensification of fighting and the incursion of the occupation army by land, Bakr was displaced towards the Bureij refugee camp in the center of the Strip, and from there to the city of Khan Yunis, adjacent to the city of Rafah, where he currently resides in a tent with his family close to the border with Egypt.
This man is not safe for himself and his family from a new displacement, but he is not sure where the next destination will be, and while he was talking heartily about his deteriorating living reality due to displacement and displacement, one of his children embraced him, and asked, "What is the fault of the children in what is happening to us?"
Bakr rejects the idea of leaving the Gaza Strip and wishes to return to his home in the Beach camp, but at the same time he expresses his fear of Israel's goals to push the displaced gradually towards the last point in the Strip, going to the Mawasi area, and pursuing them with death and destruction.
As he stirred a small amount of food, which he prepared on a wood fire for his family of eight, Bakr said, "By God, my grandfather's grandfather who died 8 years ago did not live this life," meaning that the Israeli war imposed on Gazans a harsh life.
"Enough humiliation, we were displaced and sold our phones and stuff for a living," the displaced Gazan added. We eat only one meal a day, and a child who gets a quarter of a loaf a day praises our Lord."
"We are dying slowly," Bakr said. Displacement, displacement, diseases, lack of food, high prices, and the world is watching and not moving to stop the massacre we are exposed to."
Official figures from the government's media office, run by the Islamist group Hamas, indicate that more than 45 percent of the victims of Israeli airstrikes in the southern Gaza Strip are displaced people, who were forced to evacuate their homes in Gaza City and the northern Gaza Strip.
Bakr has been repeatedly displaced from his home in Gaza City and settled in the Mawasi area of Rafah and fears the next displacement (Al Jazeera)
Nowhere safe
Al-Mawasi area extends over 14 kilometers and a depth of one kilometer along the seashore from the city of Deir al-Balah in the center of the Gaza Strip, passing through the city of Khan Yunis to the city of Rafah, where Al-Mawasi is located on an area of 3 square kilometers and is the closest to the border with Egypt.
In the context, says Sherif Neirab – a member of the committee oversees tents funded by an Arab state – to Al Jazeera Net that "the situation is catastrophic in this area, and aid is not enough for the growing needs of the successive displaced groups on the city of Rafah, especially the western area of the city, including Mawasi."
For his part, said the mayor of Rafah Ahmed Sufi to the island net that "this area lacks infrastructure, except for the main street, the internal streets are unpaved, and there is no sewage or any vital facilities, because of the Israeli blockade imposed on them until 2005."
Al-Sufi added that when the Israeli withdrawal from the Gaza Strip in the fall of 2005, Israeli settlements occupied the largest area of the Mawasi area, preventing any Palestinian development in the area, and access to it and the seashore required passage through Israeli military checkpoints.
The mayor stressed that "no place is safe in the entire Gaza Strip, including Rafah, which the occupation claims is safe, and does not stop bombing it with air and artillery."
The number of displaced people in Mawasi Rafah is estimated at about 300,300, out of a million who sought refuge in the city, which had a population of less than <>,<> before the outbreak of the war.
Mayor of Rafah Ahmed Al-Sufi More than one million displaced people in Rafah, including 300,<> in the arid area of Al-Mawasi without services or vital facilities (Al-Jazeera)
Miserable life
As far as the eye can see, there are "tent camps" in the Mawasi area, some of which have been set up by IDPs, while Arab countries are currently funding tents to accommodate the growing number of displaced people.
After the Israeli ground offensive earlier this month, the city of Khan Yunis faced a huge influx of displaced people from the city of Deir al-Balah and the camps of Bureij, Maghazi and Nuseirat in the central Gaza Strip, following Israeli warnings coinciding with an increase in air raids and artillery shelling, and attempts by the occupation army to incursion on the ground.
Thousands of displaced people have sought refuge in the arid Mawasi area, which is almost devoid of housing, and lacks vital services, after the city of Rafah no longer had room for more, and homes, schools and even streets and public squares were flooded with tents for the displaced.
Al-Mawasi's name was highlighted during the second week of the war, when Israel claimed it was a safe zone, advised Gazans and the north to go there, specifically in "south of Wadi Gaza", and also announced that humanitarian aid would reach the displaced who go there.
Humanitarian aid from the Rafah crossing with Egypt is not enough to cover basic needs, and displaced people are forced to buy a little food at prices that Bakr describes as "crazy, life is fire".
Source : Al Jazeera