The fear has been building for weeks.
More than a million Palestinians fled to Rafah, the southernmost area of Gaza, hoping to escape the war. Now, Israel has threatened to expand its invasion there as well.
Amid days of struggles to secure food, water and shelter, uncertainty has dominated people’s conversations, said Khalid Shurrab, a charity worker who lives with his family in a leaky tent in Rafah.
“We have two options, either stay as we are or face our fate – death,” said 36-year-old Mr. Shurab. “People literally have no other safe place to go.”
Rafah, which had so far escaped the brunt of Israel’s onslaught, has become a new focus of a war now in its sixth month. Most of Gaza’s 2.2 million residents have ended up there, multiplying the area’s population and depleting its limited resources.
And now, with Israel signaling its intention to go after Hamas militants in Rafah and Egypt preventing most Gazans from crossing its border to the south, families fear they are trapped.
In Rafah Governorate, home to fewer than 300,000 people before the war, space has become a scarce commodity. Displaced families fill schools, tent camps spread across empty lots, and pedestrians crowd the streets.
Cooking gas is so scarce that the air is acrid with smoke from fires burning wood and chopped furniture. Fuel is expensive, so people walk, ride bicycles, or take carts pulled by donkeys and horses. Since Rafah lies along the Egyptian border, where most of the aid comes in, it receives more supplies from other parts of Gaza.
However, many residents are so desperate that they throw rocks at aid trucks to make them stop or swarm them to try and grab what they can. Hundreds of people were killed and injured in rioting and Israeli fire when a convoy of trucks tried to deliver aid to Gaza City, in the northern part of the territory, last month.
Most of the people taking refuge in Rafah spend their days trying to provide for their basic needs: to find clean water to drink and bathe, to get enough food and to calm their children when Israeli strikes hit nearby.
“Everything is difficult here,” said Hadeel Abu Sharek, 24, who lives with her 3-year-old daughter and other relatives in a closed restaurant in Rafah. “Our dreams were shattered. Our life has become a nightmare.”
Her family usually only manages to find enough food for one meal a day, she said, and while they boil water before drinking it, many of them have been sick, including her daughter. They don’t have an easy place to get medicine.
“The shelling is scary, especially for the children,” he said, adding that everyone huddled in a corner when they heard Israeli strikes, fearing their roof would collapse.
The restaurant was their second stop since they left their homes in northern Gaza at the start of the war. Now they have to move again, he said. The restaurant kicks them out, but gave them some metal rods and waterproof tarp to make a makeshift tent.
Shelter is so scarce that rents have skyrocketed, schools have become de facto refugee camps, and many families sleep in tents or spread plastic sheets to protect themselves from the rain and cold.
Shortly after the invasion began, Ismail al-Afifi, a tailor from northern Gaza, set up camp with his family under a concrete staircase in a school. The building has since been filled with many more refugees, with four families sometimes sharing a single classroom.
To meet their needs, Mr al-Afify’s sons are looking out for help and water trucks so they can rush in and try to get supplies or fill their buckets with water. When they have flour, his bride bakes bread with other women in a makeshift clay oven in the street.
He often goes to bed hungry, said Mr al-Afifi, 62.
Shortages of fuel and other supplies have nearly crippled local medical facilities.
In an interview, Marwan al-Hams, director of Abu Yousef al-Najjar Hospital, Rafah’s largest hospital, listed the services he could no longer provide: intensive care, complex surgeries, CT scans or MRIs, and cancer treatments . Doctors are short of painkillers and drugs for diabetes and high blood pressure. Their ability to provide dialysis is so reduced that patients with kidney disease have died.
The hospital itself is full, with displaced families housed in the grounds and corridors. There are only 63 beds for about 300 patients, he said.
“Most cases are dealt with on the floor,” he said.
During the first months of the war, the Israeli military repeatedly ordered people in Gaza to evacuate to the south for their own safety. But Israel has often struck Rafah as well, killing people and destroying buildings. On Wednesday, Israeli forces struck an aid depot in Rafah that killed a UN worker, according to UNRWA, the largest aid group on the ground in Gaza.
Aid groups and United Nations officials have warned that an invasion of Rafah would be devastating for civilians in Gaza, and President Biden has called such a move a “red line,” though he added that helping Israel defend itself remains “critical.” . Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu responded with his own red line: “This October 7 will not happen again,” he said, referring to the Hamas attack on Israel that started the war. Israeli officials say about 1,200 people were killed and about 240 were taken to Gaza as prisoners.
Vowing to destroy Hamas, Israel has launched a bombing campaign and invasion that Gaza health authorities say has killed more than 31,000 people, a number that does not distinguish between civilians and fighters.
In mid-February, an Israeli strike hit the al-Hoda mosque in Rafah, collapsing its roof and severely damaging the building, according to Palestinian media and Aaed Abu Hasanein, the facility’s prayer leader. It was not clear why the building was hit. Israel has accused Hamas of using civilian buildings such as schools and mosques for terrorist activities, a charge Hamas denies.
The strike rendered most of the building useless, Mr Abu Hasanein said.
“As you can see, there is nothing left,” he said. “All gone.”
But people still pray at the mosque, he added. About 150 people can fit in the corridor where visitors once left their shoes, the least damaged part of the building.
“This is the safest, non-burning place,” said Mr Abu Hasanein.
