[News] The suffering of the displaced in Gaza: From overcrowding to rubble and soup kitchens

[Anti-Imperialist News]

 Reports <https://english.palinfo.com/category/reports/>
The suffering of the displaced in Gaza: From overcrowding to rubble and
soup kitchens

Thursday 13-August-2026

GAZA, (PIC)

In Gaza, displacement is no longer just a tent set up in a temporarily safe
place, but it has become a life suspended between the rubble of a home that
was once a homeland, a soup kitchen where food is awaited, and a water
container carried on shoulders in search of the most basic elements of life.

In the south of the Gaza Strip, the displaced stand in front of the ruins
of their destroyed homes, not searching for anything valuable they left
behind, but searching for a small space that could be suitable for living.
While rubble removal and reconstruction work are delayed, the residents
carry their simple tools and begin by themselves removing what was
destroyed of their homes, hoping to recover some of the place that the war
stole.

Displaced people in Khan Yunis camp are trying to remove the rubble of
their destroyed homes, amid the accumulation of huge amounts of rubble, and
the delay in removal and reconstruction operations, while the harsh
displacement conditions drive them toward what remains of their homes, even
though they have become nothing more than destroyed walls and memories
scattered under the rubble.

Relentless overcrowding

The displaced say that severe overcrowding in displacement areas, alongside
the spread of insects, rodents, and diseases, especially among children,
has made staying in displacement places harsher, and pushed many of them to
try to return to the sites of their destroyed homes.

The citizen Khalil Abu Auda, one of the displaced people in Khan Yunis,
said that life conditions in displacement areas, and the accompanying
spread of diseases, insects, and rodents, pushed his family, his children,
and their relatives to return to their destroyed home, and work with their
hands to remove the rubble accumulated over it.

He added that the absence of institutions and specialized bodies that
undertake removing ruins and removing rubble left families with a difficult
choice, represented by carrying out this task themselves, despite its
hardship and danger, in the hope that they can recover part of their home
and return to a more stable life.

A home built from among the ruins

Abu Auda said that the family started removing rubble from the home, after
finding at the beginning of their work the remains of a martyr, before
completing the process of clearing ruins and searching for a space that
could become a shelter for them.

He added that they have been proceeding with this task for months, trying
to remove one part of the home after another, in the hope that they can
rearrange the place and live in it, even if it no longer resembles the home
they knew before the war.

What is cleared from the rubble is not just stones and cement, but years of
life, family memories, and the dreams of children who saw in the home their
first and last refuge.

When war destroys children’s dreams

Abu Auda described the hardest thing his family experienced as not being
the loss of the home alone, but rather the collapse of the dreams
associated with it, emphasizing that the war deprived his children of the
simplest meanings of safety and childhood.

He underlined that children who were supposed to be busy playing, getting
an education, and dreaming of the future, their thinking became confined to
harsh details that do not resemble their age; where they will find food,
how they will get water, and when they will be able to return to a place
they can call a home.

>From the soup kitchen to carrying water

The phrase of the displaced person about his children, “all their thinking
now is between two ladlefuls from a soup kitchen and carrying water,”
summarizes the scale of the transformation that affected the childhood of
Gaza’s children; instead of their days being full of school, play, family,
and friends, the details of their day revolved around waiting in front of
soup kitchens, carrying water, searching for shelter, and trying to survive
from a reality that does not give them a chance to catch their breath.

In Gaza, rubble is no longer just a trace of war, but has become part of
the daily scene of the lives of the displaced, while the journey of
searching for water, food, and shelter has turned into a continuous burden
accompanying them from one place to another.

A life suspended between the tent and the home

The scene of the displaced removing the rubble of their homes by themselves
reveals a tragedy that goes beyond the loss of housing, reaching the very
meaning of stability. These people are not searching for the luxury of
returning, but for a roof to protect their children, a place to protect
them from insects and disease, and a small corner that restores to them
something of the life they lost.

While the Strip waits for the removal of rubble and the start of
reconstruction, the residents continue with their hands clearing the path
of return from under the ruins, in an attempt to recover what can be
recovered of their homes and memory, and at the heart of this attempt stand
the children who grew up before their time, carrying water instead of toys,
waiting for food instead of school, and dreaming only of a day when the
home returns to being a home, not a pile of rubble.
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