Little children in sandals wrinkle their faces under the Gaza sun. Others wander barefoot through a sprawling schoolyard in Deir al-Balah in the central Gaza Strip.
CNN footage shows clothes on clotheslines and dusty plastic tents flapping in the wind.
Muhammad Shabat, a displaced Palestinian, says: “Our lives are full of suffering. There is no drinking water, and no suitable place to live.”
“There is no health, no education. How will these children live? How will they study? We had Covid, and now we have war. We are mentally exhausted.
“I am 60 years old, and I have lived through wars before, but we have never lived through this oppression.”
Palestinians described months of forced displacement as they anxiously awaited news from their separated relatives across the Strip, without respite from Israeli strikes.
Rahaf Shabat, a young student who was forced to flee Beit Hanoun in northern Gaza, told CNN that she felt sad when the war disrupted her school year. She said: “Today marks the 200th day of the war. It feels like 200 years… of fear, terror, missiles, martyrs and death.”
Another Palestinian child, Rama Shabat, says she has not seen her loved ones for seven months. “We have lost our dreams and our childhood. We miss our loved ones in the north,” Rama told CNN, crying.
Lawyer Hala Abdan said that her 20-year-old son had his left foot amputated after being injured in a drone strike in December. “I struggle to offer him anything, like all Palestinian people,” she said. “It has been 200 days of suffering that one cannot bear… 200 days of disaster.”
