The men in the ballroom of the Dheisheh refugee camp in the West Bank spend most of their days and nights glued to their phones, smoking and constantly refreshing their news feed. They look exhausted: the horrors of the last few days clearly visible on their faces.
These 180 men are refugees from Gaza. They are among about 18,000 residents of the enclave who have work permits in Israel and can cross the border from one side to the other. When the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) closed all access to Gaza following the Hamas terrorist attack on October 7, these men were trapped.
Some have wives and children in Khan Younis, a city in southern Gaza that is now the epicenter of their own rapidly unfolding refugee crisis, and are unable to leave.
The IDF has been relentlessly attacking Gaza after Hamas extremists carried out a terrorist attack and launched thousands of rockets that have so far killed at least 1,400 people. Hamas also kidnapped around 150 other people last Saturday during its unprecedented violence.
The Israeli military claims that its objective is to destroy Hamas and ensure that it can never carry out such an attack again. But the civil cost of the campaign was immense. The Palestinian Health Ministry in Gaza said 2,450 people have been killed in the last eight days, which is more than during the entire 2014 war, which lasted 51 days.
Ismail Abd Almagid’s wife and five children – four girls and a boy – are in Gaza while he remains in the refugee camp. He has videos of all of them on his cell phone. One of them shows his daughter Misk eating a piece of mango. When he plays the video, tears start streaming down his face.
Tala, their second eldest daughter, was injured in the 2014 war, when the family was staying at her parents’ house. “She loves roller skating, so I told her I’ll bring her roller skates when I get back,” he said.
Abd Almagid, 44, told CNN who tries to stay in touch with his wife all the time, but communication has been difficult since Israel cut off Gaza’s access to electricity, food and water.
“My children are telling me to pray for them. The situation there is very difficult,” she said. “I would come back [para Gaza] right now… even with everything that is happening, take me to Gaza, I will come with you right now, my life is not worth living without my family.”
Right now, a huge population movement is underway in Gaza, with hundreds of thousands of people heading south, many of them to the overcrowded streets of Khan Younis.
The Israeli military told people living in the densely populated north of Gaza, including Gaza City, to move to the south of the strip. The United Nations said the instruction, which affects 1.1 million people, would cause “devastating humanitarian consequences.”
The Israel Defense Forces told CNN on Sunday (15) who estimate that 500,000 people have left northern Gaza heading south so far.
When Abd Almagid obtained authorization to work in Israel in October last year, it was like winning the lottery. The economy of Gaza, which is governed by Hamas but blockaded by Israel and Egypt, has been decimated and the unemployment rate is 45%, according to the Palestinian Central Statistics Office.
“I always wanted this license because the situation in Gaza is very serious. The financial situation, the debt, the economy is zero. There are no job opportunities,” he said, adding that he was unemployed from the time he graduated in 2004 until he got his license.
Israel began issuing thousands of work permits for Gazans to cross into Israel as part of an economic incentive strategy that Israeli authorities hoped would dissuade Hamas from further armed conflict.
His wife, trained as an English teacher, is also unemployed. He said he spent every other week in Israel, where he worked in a bakery.
Many of the men in the Dheisheh refugee camp are in the same situation – they are the only members of their families who have jobs. The salaries they earn in Israel are often higher than anything they would get in Gaza.
Marwan Saqer, 55, is the only one in his entire family who has a job – and the only one who has ever set foot outside Gaza.
He was working at a construction site in Kafr Qassem, an Arab city near Tel Aviv, when Hamas attacked Israel. He claimed that the Palestinian Authority told him and other Gazans to come to the West Bank after their Israeli work permits were canceled.
He said the people of Dheisheh welcomed them with open arms, bringing them mattresses, blankets and basic supplies, as well as providing comfort and companionship.
The Dheisheh camp in Bethlehem was first established in 1949, when 3,000 Palestinians settled there after being expelled or fleeing villages west of Jerusalem.
Since then, the camp’s population has grown to more than 18,500 people who still live in a now built-up area of one-third of a square kilometer, according to the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees.
The camp’s walls are decorated with portraits of its mostly young residents who were killed in the decades-long Israel-Palestine conflict. The tradition began in the 1990s as a way to celebrate them and persists until now.
While the camp is under Palestinian control, the Israel Defense Forces regularly carry out raids, arresting people and conducting attacks. Local residents told CNN that the IDF arrived on Sunday morning and detained three people. Although 180 people from Gaza have already arrived at the camp, more are expected to arrive in the coming days.
Marwan Saqer said that, as far as he knows, his wife and eight children left their home in central Gaza three or four times last week, but have now returned.
While talking to the CNN , Saqer’s phone rang several times – his son was calling from Gaza. He answered, but was disconnected almost immediately as the signal on the other end failed. “We talk, but they only tell me half the truth. They don’t want to make me more worried,” he told CNN .
The fact that it is the husbands and fathers who are in the relative safety of the refugee camp, while the women and children are in Gaza, weighs heavily on these men. “It is difficult. We all sat together and shared our feelings. We all feel the same, all parents. We all feel the suffering of our children,” Saqer said.
The space is becoming claustrophobic and the atmosphere is tense. Arguments can easily arise over issues such as a power point. “There are people in our group who stay up all night crying,” Saqer said. “We are all physically here, but our minds are in Gaza.”
*With information from CNN’s Jeremy Diamond, Matthias Somm, Kareem Khaddar and Hamdi Alkhshali.
Source: CNN Brasil
Bruce Belcher is a seasoned author with over 5 years of experience in world news. He writes for online news websites and provides in-depth analysis on the world stock market. Bruce is known for his insightful perspectives and commitment to keeping the public informed.
