Human rights organizations and residents describe the situation in the enclave as getting more desperate. Here is a closer look.
Aryn Baker and
For the past several weeks, Fadia Nasser, a widow sheltering in Deir al Balah in central Gaza, says she has subsisted on nothing but a small sandwich of herbs for breakfast and a tomato she shares with her daughter for lunch.
Eleven miles away in a tent camp in southern Gaza, Said Lulu, who used to run a small coffee kiosk in Gaza City, says he is suffering in pain from kidney disease but has no access to the clean water doctors say he must drink to keep it from getting worse.
And Ola Moen, in Beit Lahia in the enclave’s north, fears going outside because of frequent airstrikes. But she doesn’t feel she has a choice: She says she spends her days scouring pharmacies for burn cream and painkillers for her 9-year-old nephew, whose legs were broken and burned by an Israeli airstrike in October.
Even as mediators try to secure a cease-fire deal between Israel and Hamas, Palestinians and human rights organizations say the humanitarian situation is getting more desperate.
In the 14 months since Israel launched its invasion of Gaza in response to the Hamas-led terror attack on Israel, military bombardments have turned cities into rubble-filled wastelands and 90 percent of the population of about 2.1 million has been displaced at least once. Winter is adding to the misery. A doctor at a hospital in Khan Younis, in southern Gaza, said that four infants in tent encampments had died from the cold in the past week.
Israel says that its target is Hamas and that it does everything possible to limit the loss of civilian life. But the increasingly dire humanitarian situation has prompted a particularly scathing chorus of condemnation from the United Nations and international human rights organizations.
We are having trouble retrieving the article content.
Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.
Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and your Times account, or for all of The Times.
Thank you for your patience while we verify access.
Want all of The Times? .
Source: www.nytimes.com