March 15, 2024
Olga Cherevko was part of a four-person OCHA team that travelled to the Gaza Strip in January to support the response to its unprecedented humanitarian crisis. Here, Olga describes her experiences and the unbearable reality that millions of people in Gaza face each day.
On a sunny January morning in Gaza, one small stretch of the Strip’s coastal road seems ordinary, mundane: children play on the beach; adults stroll, daydream, chat and laugh; camels pensively chew sunburned grass.
The children’s laughter almost drowns out the sounds of war planes and explosions that punctuate the air day and night. If one looks away from the sea, sprawling rows of tents, some neatly organized, some haphazardly put together, line the streets as donkeys pull carts full of people and their belongings. Many more people are on foot, also clearly on the move, in search of safety, food or water.
Children play among tents in Rafah, southern Gaza Strip. © UNICEF/Eyad El Baba
I previously worked for UNRWA [UN Agency for Palestine Refugees] in Gaza, from 2014 to 2017, and this was my first time returning to Gaza since then. But the tragic circumstances made this mission surreal.
Even getting into Gaza was difficult. We entered through the Rafah border crossing between Gaza and Egypt, which is the only passenger crossing that remains open today. We left Cairo at 5 a.m., and after a long and tedious journey with multiple checkpoints along the way, we finally entered Gaza at around 7 p.m. that day.
I was relieved to see many familiar faces of former colleagues, though many had aged beyond their years. They’ve lived through years of unimaginable suffering, many having lost multiple family members in this or previous escalations in fighting. Yet somehow they found a way to smile through the pain.
Today, there is no safe place in Gaza. Everywhere, people talk about being worried for their safety, about the uncertainty of the future and what Gaza will look like in the months to come.
Entering Gaza City for the first time was shocking. The area where I lived in 2014 was unrecognizable. Nothing that I remembered was left. The beautiful port, the neighbourhood shop, and the mosque rebuilt several times after being destroyed over the years of fighting were now just piles of ruins. Iron stuck out of the pieces of concrete that were once someone’s home – places put together lovingly and carefully, and where perhaps someone hoped to see their children grow, graduate, dream.
Mai is the mother of four-year-old Yusef, who has a serious heart condition. When I asked her what she wished for, she replied:
“I wish to return to my home, but I know there is nothing to return to.”
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More than 60 per cent of housing units in Gaza are reportedly damaged or destroyed. © UNICEF/Omar Al-Qattaa
Displaced and bombarded as the world watches
Now in its sixth month, this war shows no signs of abating. More than 30,000 people have been reported killed, with more than 71,000 injured, most of them women and children. Many more remain buried under the rubble as constant bombardments destroy more buildings and kill and injure civilians daily.
More than 50 per cent of the population of the Gaza Strip has been squeezed into the ever-shrinking space that is Rafah. Evacuation orders continue, as more and more families are forced to flee in search of safety.
When I worked for UNRWA, Rafah was my “area of responsibility.” My colleague and I would visit every UNRWA installation and speak to people in schools, health facilities and aid distribution points.
Back in 2014, after one of the most intense escalations, which lasted for 51 days, people were exhausted, traumatized and looking for answers. The only thing everyone knew was that this would happen again and again unless a meaningful political solution was found.
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In late January, on a road near Nasser Hospital, people flee the bombing with the few belongings they can transport. © UNOCHA/Olga Cherevko
Privacy and safety are impossible, especially for women
Since many families had little time to pack any belongings, they fled with just the clothes they were wearing. Many of the displaced women in Gaza now wear the toube salah cloth – a must-have clothing item for every practicing Muslim woman. This dress, used for prayers or quick errands, is a quick fix in case the family has to pack up and run, yet again, in search for safety.
An even more tragic reason to wear it: the women want to make sure they’re found in dignified clothing should they get killed in the night.
Sanitation facilities are almost non-existent, and women are weary of using the makeshift toilets, some of which have only a simple curtain draped over the top. Nights are especially difficult, since many sites for displaced people have no lighting, making these bathroom trips even more unsettling. Several women told me about forgoing water and food as long as possible just so they didn’t have to use the toilet.
As people become more desperate and social order breaks down further, criminality is on the rise. Fights, thefts and break-ins are common in some shelters.
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Seba, a 37-year-old mother of two, wears the toube salah cloth. Before being displaced by the war, she owned a beautiful house that had a garden filled with flowers and crops, near Khan Younis city. © UNICEF
Hostilities continue throughout the Strip, with multiples casualties reported every day. Not a single hospital in the Gaza Strip is fully functional, and only 12 out of 36 are operating at limited capacity. A severe lack of staff, critical equipment, electricity, fuel and food is the norm.
Even simple things like ibuprofen are impossible to find.
Doctors tell harrowing stories of operating on patients – including women having a C-section and children with trauma injuries – without anesthesia, and of blood-curdling screams piercing the hallways. In each hospital we entered, the hallways were filled with patients and their families. Children with colostomy bags, shrapnel wounds and amputated limbs were everywhere. Blood-stained floors and a constant influx of injured patients was the norm during such visits.
In January 2024, for the first time since October 2023, the World Health Organization has warned of a significant spike in Hepatitis A. In addition, the rates of diarrhoea in children under age 5 are dozens of times higher today than at the same time in 2023.[1] Since then, disease has spread at lightning speed.
Back in 2014 I spoke to a doctor in Rafah, who told me how challenging the situation was for people at that time.
He said: “People don’t dream here anymore.”
No one could have imagined that 10 years later their dreams would be replaced by the most terrifying collective nightmare.
[1]Figures are for the south of Wadi Gaza, where monitoring is still feasible.
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Nurses at Shifa Hospital attend to a patient lying on the floor. © UNOCHA
Lives and neighbourhoods destroyed
Once just an ordinary neighbourhood with apartment complexes, schools and clinics, Rafah is now a chaotic bustle of hundreds of thousands of displaced people looking for shelter, food or water.
During my month in Gaza, I stayed at the OCHA guesthouse. This meant that I lived in a hard-wall building with a mattress to sleep on and a few hours of electricity a day – privileges that many people in Gaza did not have.
The guesthouse was only a couple of kilometres from the building where most staff work, yet it sometimes took over an hour to reach that building, as the area’s capacity has long exceeded its limits. Rows of new tents sprung up each day, and hungry people wandered the crowded streets.
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Rows of tents on a rainy day in Rafah. © UNICEF/Eyad El Baba
Due to the absence of fuel, donkeys and horses are now the backbone of transportation in Gaza. But as food supplies dwindled further, including supplies of animal feed, donkeys and horses fell to the ground, ribs protruding through skin rubbed raw and bleeding, exhausted and starving, no longer able to pull the carts full of people and their belongings.
In the north, the situation is even more catastrophic, and the level of destruction is unprecedented. Hundreds of decimated residential buildings line the streets, as hungry packs of feral and emaciated cats and dogs rummage through the rubble in search of food.
Disturbing reports of children starving to death are becoming more frequent. Hundreds of thousands of people are effectively besieged, with most of the requests from humanitarian agencies to deliver aid to northern Gaza denied or obstructed.
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Two-year-old Leen suffers from severe acute malnutrition. Her family was displaced for more than four months, during which time she lost a drastic amount of weight. Leen is now receiving treatment from UNICEF. © UNICEF/Eyad El Baba
One of our missions to the north was denied or obstructed four times in a row. We spent one of the days at a checkpoint waiting for more than three hours as bombs fell all around us. Finally, we were forced to turn back. These denials in turn paralyze humanitarian partners’ ability to respond to the needs of the extremely vulnerable population.
Even worse, when a trickle of aid does manage to make it north, humanitarian workers and people desperately searching for food are subject to extreme danger – convoys regularly come under fire. The latest incident took place on 29 February with a (non-UN) aid convoy, in which hundreds of people were killed and injured as they approached the convoy in a desperate effort to feed themselves. This is an appalling reminder of the reality in Gaza.
In north Gaza, desperate crowds of starving people try to collect food aid that fell from a truck. © UNOCHA
Nowhere to run
Rafah is now under imminent threat of a ground invasion. What makes people in Gaza different from almost every other civilian facing war and destruction is that they cannot escape. Every possible exit point is sealed. There is literally nowhere left to run.
The area near the Egypt border – once empty and uninhabitable – is now filled with tent cities, and shelters reach the border wall. Newcomers from elsewhere in Gaza are setting up their meager makeshift housing in the tiny squares of land that become scarcer by the day.
“We look for the grey smoke clouds to check for danger,” Engineer Sharif, a community leader in Khan Younis, tells me, exhausted from sleepless nights filled with the sounds of war.
The blistering winter winds and freezing rains swept away tents and flooded shelter areas. With every downpour, more tents sprout leaks and families wake up with their sparse belongings submerged.
Flames and smoke billow in the air after an air strike on 19 October. © WHO
The fate of 2.3 million people looks bleaker than ever
What happens next is the question on everyone’s mind. But there are many unknowns, and with Ramadan having just begun, people in Gaza are contemplating whether they will be forced to move yet again. But where? That is a question no one can answer right now.
The UN is repeatedly calling for improved access to enable humanitarian partners to deliver safely and at scale. So far, these calls have largely been ignored. Civilians in Gaza feel abandoned by the world. “They have forgotten us,” one young doctor in Shifa hospital told me.
The human toll of this crisis is immeasurable. And as humanitarians struggle to provide assistance, the social fabric of the society deteriorates at lightning speed.
“I wish to wake up one morning, back in my house in Gaza,” sighs Um Mohammed. “But for now I feel as though I’m trapped in a nightmare.”
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The end of my mission in Gaza meant leaving dear friends behind yet again after reconnecting with them after so many years. My daily check-in with one of my friends in Gaza elicits a proof-of-life reply:
“I’m still in the life”.
I can hear his voice in my head pronouncing those words in exactly the same way every time. Unfortunately, since we began this grim text exchange, his brother and his 2-year-old granddaughter have been killed. Receiving his texts is both a relief and a heartbreak, as I struggle to find the words to reply and to imagine the sheer diabolical experience every person in Gaza is forced to endure today.
“I cannot take any more deaths, I have lost too many loved ones,” said a teenage girl I once met in Rafah. “We need peace.”
No child should ever go through such horror. The trauma being experienced by the people in Gaza today will reverberate in people’s conscience for generations to come.
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People, including children, wait in a long line to receive a small amount of food in Rafah, southern Gaza Strip. Every person in Gaza is now food insecure, and one in every four people is on the edge of starving. © UNICEF/Abed Zagout
As uncertainty regarding Gaza’s future persists, those of us with loved ones trapped in this vicious conflict spend the days absorbing its volatile developments. I don’t know if the last text I sent hasn’t gone through because there’s no network to transmit it, or because my friends are no longer “in the life.” So, I wait, hoping for the best, as news of more deaths fills the airwaves and smoke smolders after yet another air strike in this long-suffering place.
The international community has the moral imperative to address this humanitarian catastrophe. Any further delay will cost even more lives and jeopardize any hope for Gaza’s recovery and peace.
Time is not on anyone’s side.
Document Sources: Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA)
Subject: Access and movement, Armed conflict, Assistance, Casualties, Children, Food, Health, Living conditions, Water, Women, malnutrition
Publication Date: 15/03/2024
URL source: https://unocha.exposure.co/gaza-i-cannot-take-any-more-deaths-ive-lost-too-many-loved-ones