Life’s many hardships in Rafah

Tightly-packed tents fill the city of Rafah at the Gaza Strip's southern tip, with UNRWA estimating that the city's 55 square kilometers now host around 1.5 million people, over six times its resident population. Forcefully displaced from brick-and-mortar homes to cloth and plastic tents, Palestinians who were spared fatal Israeli military operations nonetheless struggle for survival.

In tents pitched on streets, sidewalks, schools, NGO properties and public land, Palestinians in Gaza meet essential life needs with great hardship. There is a lack of basic foodstuffs, water, means for cooking and heating, and infrastructure for sanitation. Starting early in the morning and until sunset, they queue in long lines to keep their children alive by procuring a gallon of water, some bread, or a free meal prepared by charities in limited amounts. Lines also extend outside the tin bathrooms that are set up to serve numbers beyond their capacity. Clothes and dishes are washed in the most primitive of ways, with people crouched over humble buckets of rationed water.