‘Catastrophic’ conditions in Rafah as Palestinians reach the end of the line

Palestinian mother of five Om Ahmed Abdel Al refused to budge when officials told her there was no room at a UN school that was being used as a shelter for displaced people in Rafah on Gaza’s border with Egypt.

“Where can we go?” she asked, after joining relatives she had found there. “We’ve been moving from UN school to UN school, from displacement to displacement and from suffering to even worse suffering.”

UN officials warn that Rafah is becoming overwhelmed as the Israeli offensive and evacuation orders have pushed 85 per cent of its 2.3mn population further south. The frontier town is the furthest they can flee, but the border with Egypt is sealed and there is nowhere else for them to go. 

Thousands are already living on the streets of the city, exposed to the winter weather and with barely any access to food, water or hygiene facilities. Its infrastructure will not cope with a displaced population that could reach 1mn, aid officials say. UN schools serving as shelters in Rafah are already several times over capacity.

Conditions are dire. At the school where Om Ahmed is sheltering, up to 70 women and girls are crammed into each room, sleeping on mattresses on the floor, while men and boys spend their nights in makeshift shelters in courtyards.

There is little food, clean water or electricity. Families cook in smoke-filled corridors on fires fuelled with cardboard or with wood from felled trees. Up to 700 people use a single toilet, queueing for hours for their turn.

“People are desperate to get a bag of flour . . . hunger and disease stalk everyone,” Thomas White, Gaza director of UNRWA, the main UN relief agency in the territory, posted on X on Friday. 

Before arriving in Rafah, Om Ahmed’s family had been sheltering at a UN school in Khan Younis, the biggest city in the south of Gaza and now a main target of Israel’s military offensive. Since the end of a week-long truce on December 1, Israeli forces have intensified air and land attacks on the city, sending fresh waves of people fleeing towards Rafah.

The expansion of Israel’s military campaign beyond the north threatens the entire relief operation in Gaza, the UN has said. UNRWA chief Philippe Lazzarini has called for an immediate ceasefire and warned the humanitarian situation was “untenable”, describing his agency’s mandate as being “on the verge of collapse.” At least 130 UNRWA staff have been killed in Israeli strikes.

“Without safe shelter and aid, civilians in Gaza risk death or will be forced to Egypt and beyond,” he wrote to the UN General Assembly.

The risk of an influx of refugees has alarmed Egypt, which has repeatedly stated its opposition to what it describes as an Israeli plan to expel the Palestinians into its Sinai peninsula. Diaa Rashwan, head of the state information service, said late last week that this was a “red line that Egypt will not allow to be crossed”.

Civil order is breaking down in Gaza as the humanitarian situation deteriorates, UN officials warn. “The streets feel wild, particularly after dark — some aid convoys are being looted and UN vehicles stoned. Society is on the brink of full-blown collapse,” White said on X.

In Rafah, Om Ahmed said people were in a “catastrophic situation” with no water or food. “All the children and elderly are ill. All have coughs, skin diseases and stomach bugs. Personal hygiene is impossible,” she said.

Hiba Yassin, a grandmother making tea on a small fire, said the sound of her baby grandson’s cough was “like a knife going through my heart”. Lamenting the lack of food or nappies for her children, her daughter added: “We‘re back to the stone age.”

Disease, alongside the war itself, is one of the “two horsemen of the apocalypse” in Gaza, Martin Griffiths, UN relief chief said last week. “It will only get worse as we are unable to sustain any supplies to hospitals, any safe water desalination,” he added.

At least 17,000 Palestinians have been killed by Israel’s air, land and sea offensive since October 7, according to Gaza health authorities. The Jewish state launched its military campaign in retaliation for a cross-border raid by Hamas militants in southern Israel that killed 1,200 Israelis, according to government figures.

Mohamed Abu Saada, a father of seven, had erected a tent outside the UN school in Rafah as there was no room inside — a location he chose so the family could use the nearby bathroom. “This requires hours of waiting in line,” he said. “Is this a life? May God curse this despicable world.”

Some people unable to find space at UN schools have camped at a nearby hospital construction site. Weeping as she sat on a tattered mattress, Om Mohamed Doghmosh said her family’s move to Rafah was their fourth since the start of the war.

“We haven’t eaten for days,” she said. “Three of my sons were killed and the fourth is missing . . . I’ve lost my mind, I can’t bear it anymore.”