The Electronic Intifada 3 July 2024
After multiple forced displacement and as prices spike as a result of Israel’s grip on the delivery of aid, people in Gaza have been forced to improvise shelters.
APA imagesAhmed Baker turned an abandoned bus into a shelter due to the Gaza Strip’s lack of tents after Israel seized the Rafah border crossing, preventing aid from getting through.
With Israel seizing control of the Rafah crossing to Egypt in early May, cutting off a crucial route for aid into Gaza, Baker is just one of many who has been forced to improvise in order to provide shelter for their families.
Baker, 46, his wife, and their four children were forced to leave their house in the Tal al-Sultan neighborhood, following Israel’s invasion of Rafah on 7 May.
They camped on a sandy hill for a week in the al-Mawasi district of Khan Younis, where the heat of the day and cold of the night made life uncomfortable.
Baker visited charity organizations trying to secure a tent, but he found that none were available because of the border closure and supply trucks not getting through. He said he was simply told to leave his name and his contact details so he could be called when more tents become available.
He also learned that he would have to wait between one and two months to obtain a tent because of the limited number coming into the city and the growing number of people who had registered to get one.
Baker said he walked among the vendors in the al-Mawasi neighborhood hoping to find one selling a tent or the raw materials to make one at an affordable cost. The lowest price for all the raw materials needed for a tent, however, was $700. A finished tent could be bought for $1,000.
This, Baker noted, meant the market price of a tent had climbed tenfold from before 7 October.
After several failed attempts to get a tent, he said he sat on the sandy hill crying in front of his children, feeling helpless, unable to secure them shelter.
Hani, Baker’s 7-year-old son, asked him: “What if we make our bus a temporary home?”
Like a “home”
His son’s words inspired him. He went back to his home and began working on the bus he owned to turn it into a temporary refuge. He purchased four cooking gas cylinders to start the bus’ engine and get it to al-Mawasi.
Baker and relatives removed the seats and furnished the bus with the rugs, mattresses and pillows that they had acquired during their several displacements. They put the blankets in the baggage rack and designated a distinct area in the trunk of the bus for kitchen-related items such as food and water gallons.
They placed cloth over the glass of the bus windows to protect the inside from the sun, to keep it cool in the midst of the summer heat and to provide family members some privacy.
“I spend time with my kids inside the bus in the evenings now, just like we would at home, while we listen to the radio on my phone about the latest updates in the war. After that, we go to bed,” Baker said. “We feel as if we are in a real home.”
Saeed Rezeq, 56, had been forced to evacuate his neighborhood during the Khan Younis invasion, moving to the al-Saudi region in western Rafah.
But he said he was forced to return to living in the wreckage of his demolished home in Khan Younis because of a lack of available tents.
He and two of his sons lived there for three weeks. Rezeq’s other two sons took shelter in a friend’s house.
After losing his barbershop during the genocide, Rezeq had no source of income to purchase a tent, which he said now costs $1,000.
“I hardly provide enough food for my family … I no longer receive food aid from UNRWA,” Rezeq said, referring to the UN agency for Palestine refugees.
“The UNRWA staff are unable to access its food distribution center in Rafah’s eastern district, which has been invaded by the Israeli army since 7 May,” he said.
“I relied on the aid to feed my family over the past months. But now I am only relying on the money that my son living in Spain sends me every month to feed the children.”
Rezeq said he had appealed many times on social media for people to help him get a tent but to no avail.
Dual use parachutes
One day, aircraft began dropping humanitarian supplies over the area Rezeq and his family were in.
While others were looking for food, Rezeq’s youngest brother, Salem, dashed to retrieve the parachute canopies.
Salem told the others that they should use the canopies to build a temporary tent for themselves.
Salem also used the remnants of exploded missiles scattered about to erect the tent.
“We are glad that we finally have a shelter where we can now sleep, eat and change our clothes in a somewhat comfortable way,” Rezeq said. ”We could make something out of nothing. Many started to imitate us.”
Bassam Hassanien, 56, considers himself lucky to have found a finished tent made of burlap sacks at an affordable cost of $100 for his five family members.
Before leaving Rafah, he purchased the tent from a tailor, Majdi Aziz, who was making tents by recycling fodder sacks and using a wheel from his young son’s bicycle to power his sewing machine, which had stopped working due to power outages.
Hassanien left his house in Rafah and drove by truck to the beach of Deir al-Balah to set up the tents. But the area was too crowded.
Hassanien said he noticed many families sitting on the streets or sleeping in their cars. At that time, an interesting idea sparked in Hassanien’s mind, he recalled.
“What about making a tent inside our truck,” he asked his family.
His family didn’t say no to the idea. They had no other choice but to accept it. At the same time, they were excited to give it a try.
Hassanien has a truck without back doors so it was easy for him to set up the finished tent inside it after he parked it on the street near the beach.
And then Hassanien and his family organized their belongings inside.
“Getting a shelter became our greatest aspiration during the current war,” Hassanien said. “If we find a tent, we can find no space. And if we find space, we can find no tent.”
“We, however, find a solution for any difficulty we face. We don’t give up.”
Osama Abu Jaser is a writer based in Gaza.
