Displaced families return to north Gaza as there is no safe haven from Israel’s bombs

Hundreds of Palestinian families in the besieged Gaza Strip have begun returning from southern and central areas of the enclave to the north, days after evacuating the region following orders from the Israeli occupation army.

The voluntary return came due to the unstable security conditions in central and southern Gaza, as the Israeli army continues bombing these areas in what some have said was “the most horrific night”.

Lack of essential services including water, electricity and fuel in southern Gaza have also forced the families to return to the northern areas, despite security uncertainty.

A number of displaced people explained that returning to their homes is a natural result “in light of the pressure on services in the central and southern regions, where there is no water, electricity, or fuel.”

On Sunday, Israel pumped water briefly into southern and central Gaza, however, with the absence of electricity needed to transport this water to residential areas, the scarce water supply was useless.  The UN said Israel only provided Gazans with four per cent of the water supply they needed.

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Nizar Abdel Karim, 40, said he along with his wife and four children have relocated to a house in the city of Khan Yunis, three days ago, but they returned to Gaza City after a number of houses in the area were bombed.

He pointed out that the displacement areas are already overcrowded and do not have many services.

“I would rather die in my home than live there without any of life’s necessities. The children cannot sleep there due to lack of blankets and bedding, especially with the onset of cold weather in the Gaza Strip,” he added.

Samar Abdel Ghafour, 38, a mother of three children, returned with her family from the Deir Al-Balah area in the central Gaza Strip. She said the area “was subjected to heavy bombing in the past days, and we survived several Israeli raids that occurred in the area where we were staying.”

Her children, she added, suffer from a state of “terror and panic, where some of them suffer from nightmares” as a result of the horrors they are  witnessing.

According to Samar, the area she had moved to was approximately 60 square metres with some 50 people living in it, which meant that they had no privacy or any room to stay in, in addition to the lack of water, electricity, internet, or any of the basic necessities of life.

Moreover, Samar pointed out that “food supplies are almost running out in the areas of southern Gaza, as is the case in the Strip in general, but the overcrowding there is greater.

“The number of residents in the region puts pressure beyond the ability of the south to absorb,” she said.

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