GAZA: After weeks of Israeli bombardment left them with nowhere else to go, hundreds of Palestinians have ended up in a former Gaza prison built to hold murderers and thieves.
Yasmeen Al-Dardasi said she and her family passed wounded people they were unable to help as they evacuated from a district in the southern city of Khan Younis toward its Central Correction and Rehabilitation Facility.
They spent a day under a tree before moving to the former prison, where they now live in a prayer room. It offers protection from the blistering sun but not much else.
Al-Dardasi’s husband has a damaged kidney and just one lung but no mattress or blanket.
“We are not settled here either,” said Al-Dardasi, who, like many Palestinians, fears she will be uprooted once again.
Israel has said it goes out of its way to protect civilians.
Palestinians, many of whom have been displaced several times, say nowhere is free of Israeli bombardment, which has reduced much of Gaza to rubble.
An Israeli airstrike killed at least 90 Palestinians in a designated humanitarian zone in the Al-Mawasi area on July 13, the territory’s Health Ministry said, in an attack that Israel said targeted Hamas’ elusive military chief, Mohammed Deif.
On Thursday, Gaza’s Health Ministry said Israeli military strikes on areas in eastern Khan Younis had killed 14 people.
Entire neighborhoods have been flattened in one of the most densely populated places in the world, where poverty and unemployment have long been widespread.
According to the UN, nine in ten people across Gaza are now internally displaced.
Israeli soldiers told Saria Abu Mustafa and her family that they should flee for safety as tanks were on their way, she said. The family had no time to change and left in prayer clothes.
After sleeping outside on sandy ground, they, too, found refuge in the prison, among piles of rubble and gaping holes in buildings from the battles that were fought there. Inmates had been released long before Israel attacked.
“We didn’t take anything with us. We came here on foot, with children walking with us,” she said, adding that many women had five or six children and that water was hard to find.
She held her niece, who was born during the conflict, which killed her father and brothers.
More than 39,000 Palestinians have been killed in Israel’s air and ground offensive since Oct. 7, Palestinian health officials say.
Hana Al-Sayed Abu Mustafa arrived at the prison after being displaced six times.
If Egyptian, US and Qatari mediators fail to secure a ceasefire they have long said is close, she and other Palestinians may be on the move once again.
“Where should we go? All the places that we go to are dangerous,” she said.
