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<h1>Israel keeps bombing Gaza schools. Why do people still shelter there?</h1><p class="gmail-article__subhead"><em>Displaced Palestinians hope for protection and access to limited supplies in UN-run schools, but trauma is mounting.</em></p><div class="gmail-responsive-image"><img src="https://www.aljazeera.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/07/AA-20240717-35164347-35164342-PALESTINIAN_GIRL_PHOTOGRAPHED_SHORTLY_AFTER_ISRAELI_ATTACK_ENDURES_BRUTAL_CONDITIONS_IN_GAZA-1721212942.jpg?resize=770%2C513&quality=80" alt="" width="394" height="262" style="margin-right: 25px;"></div>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]<div class="gmail-article-info-block"><div class="gmail-article-b-l"><div class="gmail-article-author-name"><span class="gmail-article-by">By </span><span class="gmail-article-author-name-item"><a class="gmail-author-link" href="https://www.aljazeera.com/author/simon-speakman-cordall">Simon Speakman Cordall</a></span></div><div class="gmail-article-dates"><div class="gmail-date-simple gmail-css-1yjq2zp"><span class="gmail-screen-reader-text">Published On 18 Jul 2024</span><span aria-hidden="true"> - </span><font size="1"><a href="https://www.aljazeera.com/features/2024/7/18/israel-keep-bombing-gaza-schools-why-do-people-still-shelter-there">https://www.aljazeera.com/features/2024/7/18/israel-keep-bombing-gaza-schools-why-do-people-still-shelter-there</a></font></div></div></div><div class="gmail-social-share-buttons"><div class="gmail-update-reading-list"></div></div></div><div class="gmail-update-reading-list"><span class="gmail-update-reading-list__tooltip" role="tooltip"></span></div><a class="gmail-social-share-button gmail-fbc-has-badge gmail-fbc-UID_2" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" aria-label="Share on Facebook" href="https://www.facebook.com/sharer/sharer.php?u=https%3A%2F%2Faje.io%2Fjdvtmc"></a><a class="gmail-social-share-button" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" aria-label="Share on Twitter" href="https://twitter.com/intent/tweet?text=Israel%20keeps%20bombing%20Gaza%20schools.%20Why%20do%20people%20still%20shelter%20there%3F&source=sharethiscom&related=sharethis&via=AJEnglish&url=https%3A%2F%2Faje.io%2Fjdvtmc"></a><a class="gmail-social-share-button gmail-copylink" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" aria-label="Copy link" href="https://aje.io/jdvtmc"></a><p>At least eight United Nations-run schools serving as shelters to displaced Palestinians have been hit by Israeli attacks in the <a href="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">last 10 days</a>.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>Families living in disused classrooms face fatigue, trauma and the
overcrowded and unsanitary conditions of shelters stretched far beyond
capacity.</p>
<p>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 <a href="https://www.unicef.org/sop/stories/gaza-schools-equipped-shelters-preparation-future-emergencies">since at least 2017</a>, a couple were designed to double up as emergency shelters with additional power, sanitation and generator facilities.</p>
<img class="gmail-size-arc-image-770 gmail-wp-image-3055370" src="https://www.aljazeera.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/07/2024-07-14T170707Z_1686913093_RC21V8AIZH5I_RTRMADP_3_ISRAEL-PALESTINIANS-1721312068.jpg?w=770&resize=770%2C536&quality=80" alt="Palestinians stand on a balcony as others gather at the site of an Israeli air strike on a UN school sheltering displaced people" width="394" height="274" style="margin-right: 25px;">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]
<h2 id="gmail-protection">Protection</h2>
<p>“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 <a href="https://www.aljazeera.com/features/2024/1/5/hes-breathing-my-two-hours-under-gazas-rubble-after-an-israeli-strike">destroyed their home in December</a>, trapping them under rubble for two hours until neighbours dug them free.</p>
<p>“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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>“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.”</p>
<p>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.”</p>
<p>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.</p><p>“It was always there,” Mohammed recalled, “Nowhere was safe. People would simply sit and wait for it.”</p>
<p>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.”</p>
<p>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.”</p>
<p>Then an Israeli <a href="https://www.aljazeera.com/features/2024/2/5/we-are-being-starved-dispatch-from-gaza-city-as-israeli-assault-continues">evacuation order in January</a> forced them to leave the school to find refuge in the garage of a destroyed apartment building.</p>
<p><img class="gmail-size-arc-image-770 gmail-wp-image-3054750" src="https://www.aljazeera.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/07/Interactive_Eightschools_Gaza_attackedai-1721294490.jpg?w=770&resize=770%2C770&quality=80" alt="Interactive_Eightschools_Gaza_attacked" width="394" height="394" style="margin-right: 0px;"></p>
<h2 id="gmail-nine-in-every-10-people-displaced">Nine in every 10 people displaced</h2>
<p>“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.”</p>
<p>However, the agency faces several challenges in getting supplies to people, even as they shelter in schools.</p>
<p>“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”.</p>
<p>“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.”</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>“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.”</p>
<h2 id="gmail-psychological-support">Psychological support</h2>
<p>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.”</p>
<p>“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.”</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.”</p>
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