No easy solution in sight for housing crisis facing displaced Gazans

Karam Al-Najjar, 11, is a Palestinian schoolgirl who hopes one day to live in peace like other children around the world. Her desire is to live in a normal house, arrive at school in nice clothes and meet her schoolmates with happy faces.

She lives in the Khan Younis village of Khuza’a, in the south of the Gaza Strip. The village was bombarded heavily by Israeli aircraft and tanks during last year’s offensive on the coastal enclave. More than 70 villagers were killed and around 200 were wounded; 25 were arrested and 53 residential buildings were destroyed. All of the village infrastructure, including streets, sewage and water networks and electricity grids, was completely destroyed. At least 450 villagers were displaced.

“I hope to have my old house rebuilt and live in it peacefully,” Karam told me. “My family have been living in a caravan, which became uninhabitable after just two months.” She explained that in the summer they family suffer from the very high temperatures and spent most of the time outside. “When the winter came, rainwater flooded the caravan and we were obliged to move to the mosque to protect ourselves. The rain and floodwater damaged most of our property.”

It should be pointed out that the “caravan” is, in effect, a converted steel transport container provided by a charity. It has a sleeping area, kitchen and small bathroom.

Karam cannot remember going to school wearing clean clothes: “When I go to school, I walk about 300 metres through a sandy street where there is much dust in summer and mud in winter. This makes my school uniform dirty.”

Most of her schoolmates lost at least one family member during the Israeli offensive last summer. Karam herself lost her 18-year-old uncle. “We all share our fond memories of our loved ones. My uncle used to carry me on his shoulders to buy sweets.”

An oven in summer and fridge in winter

The head of her family is her father Bassam, aged 40. He explained that the 45-square metre container has to accommodate himself, his wife and mother, and his five children; it is, he said, “like an oven in summer and a fridge in winter.”

“When it started raining on Wednesday, rainwater started flooding into my shelter.” He said that all of the temporary homes in the area were flooded. They are uninhabitable for a number of reasons, he added. “In summer, we have the high temperatures, humidity and insects, mainly mosquitoes; in winter, we get rainwater flooding, mud and have to put up with the noise of the rain on the roof.”

The latter is a problem for Karam. “I lose concentration with the loud noise of the rain on the roof,” she told me.

There is no easy solution, claimed, Bassam. “The only solution is to rebuild the houses. To-date, only 13 or 14 families have been able to start rebuilding their homes. I expect our misery to last for at least four more years.”

Sewage with rainwater

Hasna Al-Najjar, 75, lost her husband in the 2014 war; she has a different story about living in a container. Last winter’s floods damaged the wooden floor of her shelter and she replaced it with small pieces of plastic, wood and nylon. “During the summer, the floor of my shelter was a refuge for insects,” she told me. “In winter, from the first day, rainwater mixed with sewage flooded my container from underneath. Within a minute, it was a pool of dirty water.”

When I entered Hasna’s container, it was hard to stay for long. The smell was awful and my leg was caught in several holes in the damaged floor.

Despite the difficult situation that Hasna faces, Walaa, 47, and her husband Adnan, 50, hope to have a container to live in. “We have been here since the end of last year’s Israeli offensive,” Adnan said. “We have nothing to rest in and we spend all of the time in the open air.”

The tent they have cobbled together “is not fit for donkeys,” they told me. “When it rained yesterday, water did not flood our tent from beneath the floor; it flooded in from everywhere.”

Although one of Adnan and Walaa’s daughters is married, she was shot in the eye during the war last year; another is a university student. In fact, four of their children are blind and have been adopted by a charity in Gaza City.

Collapsed ceiling

Along with his wife and small daughter, Usama Al-Najjar also lives in a container-cum-shelter. They thought that they were lucky that the wooden floor was not damaged last winter, but on the first day of this autumn’s rains, they were disappointed.

“It had just started raining,” explained Usama, “and my mother-in-law and sisters-in-law fled their shelters and came to mine seeking refuge. Everything was OK, although, water was running beneath the floor of the container which is placed on a number of bricks to be a little way above the ground.” During the night, he added, the rain started to pour in through a hole in the ceiling, which collapsed.

If there is one thing that everyone agrees about, it is that there is no easy or quick solution to the housing crisis caused by Israel’s aggressive siege and military offensives. Salah Abu-Salah is a public service official in Khuza’a. He said that the situation regarding the rebuilding projects is “difficult” due to the delay in the arrival of donations for reconstruction, as well as the strict blockade which restricts the importing of construction materials. He suggested that politics plays a major role in such restrictions.

Until the politicians can get their act together, therefore, ordinary people like those stuck in inadequate housing in the Gaza Strip must make do and suffer. Like the refugee camps before them, these “temporary” shelters could end up being more or less permanent.

Images by MEMO correspondent in Gaza, Motasem A Dalloul.

The views expressed in this article belong to the author and do not necessarily reflect the editorial policy of Middle East Monitor.