In Gaza’s Tent Camps, Girls Wrestle With A Life Stripped Of Privateness

DEIR AL-BALAH, Gaza Metropolis (AP) — For Gaza’s ladies, the hardships of life within the territory’s sprawling tent camps are compounded by the every day humiliation of by no means having privateness.

Girls battle to decorate modestly whereas crowded into tents with prolonged members of the family, together with males, and with strangers solely steps away in neighboring tents. Entry to menstrual merchandise is restricted, so that they reduce up sheets or previous garments to make use of as pads. Makeshift bathrooms normally include solely a gap within the sand surrounded by sheets dangling from a line, and these have to be shared with dozens of different folks.

Alaa Hamami has handled the modesty difficulty by continuously carrying her prayer scarf, a black material that covers her head and higher physique.

“Our whole lives have become prayer clothes, even to the market we wear it,” mentioned the younger mom of three. “Dignity is gone.”

Usually, she would put on the scarf solely when performing her every day Muslim prayers. However with so many males round, she retains it on on a regular basis, even when sleeping — simply in case an Israeli strike hits close by within the evening and she or he has to flee shortly, she mentioned.

Israel’s 14-month-old marketing campaign in Gaza has pushed greater than 90% of its 2.3 million Palestinians from their houses. Lots of of hundreds of them are actually dwelling in squalid camps of tents packed shut collectively over massive areas.

Sewage runs into the streets, and meals and water are exhausting to acquire. Winter is setting in. Households usually put on the identical garments for weeks as a result of they left clothes and lots of different belongings behind as they fled.

Everybody within the camps searches every day for meals, clear water and firewood. Girls really feel continuously uncovered.

Gaza has all the time been a conservative society. Most ladies put on the hijab, or head scarf, within the presence of males who will not be speedy household. Issues of ladies’s well being — being pregnant, menstruation and contraception — have a tendency to not be mentioned publicly.

“Before we had a roof. Here it does not exist,” mentioned Hamami, whose prayer scarf is torn and smudged with ash from cooking fires. “Here our entire lives have become exposed to the public. There is no privacy for women.”

Wafaa Nasrallah, a displaced mom of two, says life within the camps makes even the best wants troublesome, like getting interval pads, which she can not afford. She tried utilizing items of material and even diapers, which have additionally elevated in worth.

For a loo, she has a gap within the floor, surrounded by blankets propped up by sticks.

The U.N. says greater than 690,000 ladies and ladies in Gaza require menstrual hygiene merchandise, in addition to clear water and bathrooms. Help staff have been unable to fulfill demand, with provides piling up at crossings from Israel. Shares of hygiene kits have run out, and costs are exorbitant. Many ladies have to decide on between shopping for pads and shopping for meals and water.

Doaa Hellis, a mom of three dwelling in a camp, mentioned she has torn up her previous garments to make use of for menstrual pads. “Wherever we find fabric, we tear it up and use it.”

A packet of pads prices 45 shekels ($12), “and there is not even five shekels in the whole tent,” she mentioned.

Anera, a rights group lively in Gaza, says some ladies use contraception drugs to halt their intervals. Others have skilled disruptions of their cycles due to the stress and trauma of repeated displacement.

The horrible situations pose actual dangers to ladies’s well being, mentioned Amal Seyam, the director of the Girls’s Affairs Heart in Gaza, which offers provides for ladies and surveys them about their experiences.

She mentioned some ladies haven’t modified garments for 40 days. That and improvised material pads “will certainly create” pores and skin illnesses, illnesses associated to reproductive well being and psychological situations, she mentioned.

“Imagine what a woman in Gaza feels like, if she’s unable to control conditions related to hygiene and menstrual cycles,” Seyam mentioned.

Hellis remembered a time not so way back, when being a lady felt extra like a pleasure and fewer like a burden.

“Women are now deprived of everything, no clothes, no bathroom. Their psychology is completely destroyed,” she mentioned.

Seyam mentioned the middle has tracked instances the place ladies have been married youthful, earlier than the age of 18, to flee the suffocating setting of their household’s tents. The conflict will “continue to cause a humanitarian disaster in every sense of the word. And women always pay the biggest price,” she mentioned.

Israel’s marketing campaign in Gaza has killed greater than 45,000 Palestinians, over half of them ladies and kids, in response to the territory’s Health Ministry. Its rely doesn’t differentiate between combatants and civilians.

Israel launched its assault in retaliation for the Oct. 7, 2023, assault by Hamas on southern Israel, during which militants killed some 1,200 folks and kidnapped round 250 others.

With massive swaths of Gaza’s cities and cities leveled, ladies wrestle with lowered lives of their tents.

Hamami can stroll the size of her small tent in a number of strides. She shares it with 13 different folks from her prolonged household. Through the conflict, she gave start to a son, Ahmed, who’s now 8 months previous. Between caring for him and her two different youngsters, washing her household’s laundry, cooking and ready in line for water, she says there’s no time to take care of herself.

She has a number of objects that remind her of what her life as soon as was, together with a powder compact she introduced along with her when she fled her house within the Shati camp of Gaza Metropolis. The make-up is now caked and crumbling. She managed to maintain maintain of a small mirror via 4 completely different displacements over the previous 12 months. It’s damaged into two shards that she holds collectively occasionally to catch a glimpse of her reflection.

“Previously, I had a wardrobe that contained everything I could wish for,” she mentioned. “We used to go out for a walk every day, go to wedding parties, go to parks, to malls, to buy everything we wanted.”

Girls “lost their being and everything in this war,” she mentioned. “Women used to take care of themselves before the war. Now everything is destroyed.”

Related Press author Fatma Khaled in Cairo contributed to this report.