[News] Israel keeps bombing Gaza schools. Why do people still shelter there?

[Anti-Imperialist News]

 Israel keeps bombing Gaza schools. Why do people still shelter there?

*Displaced Palestinians hope for protection and access to limited supplies
in UN-run schools, but trauma is mounting.*
Zeyna El Karnawi cries in shock after an Israeli attack hit the UN-run
school in Nuseirat refugee camp in Gaza on July 14, 2024 [Salama Nabeel
Eaid Younes/Anadolu Agency]
By Simon Speakman Cordall
<https://www.aljazeera.com/author/simon-speakman-cordall>
Published On 18 Jul 2024 -
https://www.aljazeera.com/features/2024/7/18/israel-keep-bombing-gaza-schools-why-do-people-still-shelter-there
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At least eight United Nations-run schools serving as shelters to displaced
Palestinians have been hit by Israeli attacks in the last 10 days
<https://www.aljazeera.com/news/liveblog/2024/7/17/israels-war-on-gaza-live-48-killed-in-3-air-strikes-in-one-hour-in-gaza>
.

The United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) say 120 of their
educational institutions have been hit since Israel began its war on Gaza
on October 7.

Families living in disused classrooms face fatigue, trauma and the
overcrowded and unsanitary conditions of shelters stretched far beyond
capacity.

Despite the difficult conditions and the risk of bombardment, many seek out
the relative safety of UN schools, some guided by the memory of past wars
where these spaces provided a refuge, and since at least 2017
<https://www.unicef.org/sop/stories/gaza-schools-equipped-shelters-preparation-future-emergencies>,
a couple were designed to double up as emergency shelters with additional
power, sanitation and generator facilities.
[image: Palestinians stand on a balcony as others gather at the site of an
Israeli air strike on a UN school sheltering displaced people]Palestinians
stand on a balcony as others gather at the site of an Israeli air attack on
a UN-run school in Nuseirat in central Gaza Strip [Ramadan Abed/Reuters]
Protection

“You hope that the UN affiliation might protect you,” said journalist
Mohammed Mhawish, 25, who sheltered in a UN-run school in Gaza City with
his wife, two-year-old child and his parents after an Israeli attack destroyed
their home in December
<https://www.aljazeera.com/features/2024/1/5/hes-breathing-my-two-hours-under-gazas-rubble-after-an-israeli-strike>,
trapping them under rubble for two hours until neighbours dug them free.

“You need to remember, there are few residential compounds, or anywhere
else in Gaza where you can shelter,” he said, recalling how his neighbours
had taken the injured family in after rescuing them.

It soon became clear the apartment was overcrowded. However, it was the
further Israeli bombardment and land assault on their neighbourhood that
forced his family to walk the one and a half hours to the nearest UN-run
school, a 15-minute journey by car.

“It’s a central point. There’s nowhere else where you can access aid or
medicine,” he said, speaking from Cairo where his family now lives. “To be
clear, there isn’t a lot. Everything is in short supply. You seem to spend
all your time standing in line for less and less, but it’s something.”

Mohammed added, that, “from a practical perspective, you can’t share what
you don’t have. The more people in the school can also mean less food,
water and medicine.”

In winter, blankets and mattresses were in short supply and they were
forced to drink from a contaminated water source, increasing the risk of
getting sick. And there was always the threat of bombardment.

“It was always there,” Mohammed recalled, “Nowhere was safe. People would
simply sit and wait for it.”

Still, for some, there was a sense of support. “For some people, it’s good
to be around other people who’ve been through the same kind of trauma,” he
said. “People share their experiences with each other and that can help.”

But for Mohammad, it was unbearable to see how his son Rafik had been
traumatised after the bombing they survived. “He stopped communicating. He
wouldn’t cry. He wouldn’t show any emotion, there was nothing,” Mohammed
recalled. “He stopped remembering how to be a kid.”

Then an Israeli evacuation order in January
<https://www.aljazeera.com/features/2024/2/5/we-are-being-starved-dispatch-from-gaza-city-as-israeli-assault-continues>
forced them to leave the school to find refuge in the garage of a destroyed
apartment building.

[image: Interactive_Eightschools_Gaza_attacked]
Nine in every 10 people displaced

“People choose these schools because they believe sheltering under the UN
flag, as international law states, should provide safety,” UNRWA’s senior
communications officer Louise Wateridge told Al Jazeera from Gaza. “For
civilians, the schools provide safety in times of war. Under the UN flag,
these schools should be protected.”

However, the agency faces several challenges in getting supplies to people,
even as they shelter in schools.

“Several factors continue to stand in our way to bring in humanitarian
supplies into Gaza,” she said. “They include the siege, restrictions on
movements and safety of humanitarian aid workers,” she explained, going on
to stress the limited aid and equipment, much of it medical, allowed into
Gaza by the Israeli military, as well as the unpredictability of life in a
conflict zone where the schools’ occupants are regularly ordered to
evacuate by the Israeli army and make their way to another area it
designates a “safe zone”.

“People continue to be forcibly displaced,” Wateridge continued. “It’s
estimated that nine in every 10 people in Gaza are displaced. Many of them
have been displaced up to 10 times since the war started. Protracted forced
displacement makes it very difficult for us to verify data and figures.”

In addition, Wateridge said, was “the breakdown of law and order as a
result of nine months of horrific living conditions, war, hunger, siege and
chaos,” she said. Humanitarian workers also report increasing instances of
violence and gender-based violence within schools.

“Concerns are growing about the risk of cholera spreading, further
deteriorating inhumane living conditions,” Wateridge added. “WHO [The World
Health Organization] has registered a growing number of adults and children
suffering from waterborne diseases, such as hepatitis A, diarrheal
illnesses, skin conditions, and others.”
Psychological support

Ahmad Swais, a psychologist with international medical charity Doctors
Without Borders, known by its French initials, MSF, has witnessed how
gatherings of large numbers of people carry “a lot of suffering and
different experiences.”

“This increases the negative psychological and social impact on the
individuals,” he said speaking from Nasser Hospital in southern Gaza. “It
increases the severity of psychological symptoms for the individual and for
the families who are gathering in one place whether in schools or other
shelters.”

The schools offer little respite or space for those who arrive traumatised
or seriously injured from the fighting, Swais said. Many feel a sense of
dehumanisation in the difficult conditions.

Children are the worst affected psychologically by the repeated
displacements and the war. “There [are a] large number of children in
urgent need of a psychological support programme. It is crucial to create a
suitable environment for the children and a safer place to live and to
preserve their dignity and basic humanity,” he said.

Still, despite the hardships, “These people living in shelters like UNRWA
schools feel they are luckier than those living in plastic tents and
sleeping on the sand.”
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