KHAN YUNIS – When the solar rose on Friday and the fall warmth baked the rotten particles on Gaza’s streets, Mohammed Elian emerged from the zipper hollow of his new canvas house.
He — and masses of different Palestinians displaced by means of the newest battle between Israel and Hamas — have crowded right into a squalid tent camp in southern Gaza, a picture that has introduced again reminiscences of their greatest trauma.
Last week after the Israeli army ordered Elian’s circle of relatives, along with more than 1 million other Palestinians, to evacuate the north, the neatly dressed 35-year-old graphic fashion designer from Gaza City ended up homeless in the town of Khan Younis, with few comforts however skinny mattresses, solar-powered telephone chargers and no matter garments and pots he may just squeeze into his good friend’s automotive.
With nowhere else to head, Elian, his spouse and 4 children landed in the sprawling tent camp that cropped up this week as United Nations shelters overflowed in Gaza, the place the general public are already refugees from the 1948 battle surrounding Israel’s advent.
“We have left behind everything, and we are not even safe,” Elian said from a nearby hospital where he searched for water to bring back to his kids, ages 4-10. The distant roar of airstrikes could be heard over the phone.
Scores of Palestinians have lost or fled their homes during the intense Israeli bombardment prompted by a bloody cross-border attack by Hamas militants nearly two weeks ago. The impromptu construction of the tent city in Khan Younis to help shelter them has elicited anger, disbelief and sorrow across the Arab world.
Row after row of white tents rise from the dusty parking lot. Children sit in the shade and play languidly with rocks. Men cut each other’s hair. Newly acquainted neighbors wait outside to receive their shared meal from U.N. workers — a couple loaves of bread and cans of tuna or beans.
“These images are something that the Arab world cannot accept,” mentioned Daoud Kuttab, a Palestinian journalist in Jordan.
Scenes of Palestinians all of a sudden atmosphere up U.N. tents are dredging up painful reminiscences of the mass exodus that Palestinians check with because the Nakba, or “catastrophe.” In the months before and during the 1948 war, an estimated 700,000 Palestinians fled or were expelled from what is now Israel. Many expected to return when the war ended.
Seventy-five years later, those temporary tents in the West Bank, Gaza and neighboring Arab countries have become permanent cinderblock homes.
“1948 is immediately brought to mind when Palestinians in Gaza are told to flee, it’s immediately brought to mind when you see those images (of tents),” mentioned Rashid Khalidi, a professor of Arab research at Columbia University. “Palestinian writers have etched this into the Arab consciousness.”
The UN Palestinian refugee company mentioned the camp isn’t everlasting. It mentioned that the company allotted tents and blankets to dozens displaced households in Khan Younis who couldn’t have compatibility in different U.N. amenities “to protect them from the rain and provide dignity and privacy.” Gaza already is house to 8 everlasting camps, which through the years have was crowded rundown city neighborhoods.
But regional nervousness over the Khan Younis tents and Israeli evacuation warnings has grown, adding fuel to the huge, angry protests surging in Mideast capitals over the battle in Gaza that began on Oct. 7, when Hamas mounted its raid that killed 1,400 Israelis. Since then, Israel’s retaliatory bombing marketing campaign has killed greater than 4,000 Palestinians, in line with the Hamas-run Health Ministry. Many of the sufferers are girls and kids.
“It’s very worrisome for the government of Jordan,” the journalists, Kuttab, said of the wave of displaced Palestinians. “ They don’t want to see even a hint of this idea.”
Protests in the typically sedate kingdom of Jordan, home to a large population of people descended from Palestinian refugees, have rocked the capital, drawing thousands of demonstrators with an intensity unseen in years.
Elian has been so stressed about where to sleep and get food he said he hasn’t had time to fret over the symbolism. He and his family tried sheltering in one of the crowded U.N. schools, but the conditions were “horrific,” he said — no space to sleep, no privacy. At least here he can close his tent flap.
“We are living from one moment to the next,” he said. “We try not to think about what comes next — how or when we’ll go home.”
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DeBre reported from Jerusalem.