Young children wearing sandals pucker their faces under the Gazan sun. Others drift barefoot across the courtyard of a sprawling school in Deir al-Balah in central Gaza.
CNN footage shows clothes on washing lines and dusty plastic tents fluttering in the wind.
“Our lives are full of suffering, no drinking water, no livable place to stay,” says Mohammad Shabat, a displaced Palestinian.
“There is no health, no education. How will these children live? How will they study? We had COVID, now we have war. We are mentally exhausted.
“I am 60 years old, I lived through wars before, but we never lived through this oppression.”
Palestinians described months of forced displacement as they waited anxiously for news from relatives separated across the enclave, with no relief from Israeli strikes.
Rahaf Shabbat, a young student who was forced to flee from Beit Hanoun in northern Gaza, told CNN she was heartbroken when the war disrupted her school year. “Today marks 200 days of war, it feels like 200 years… of fear and horror, rockets, martyrs, and deaths,” she said.
Another Palestinian child, Rama Shabat, says she has not seen her loved ones for seven months. “We lost our dreams and our childhood. We miss our loved ones in the north,” Rama told CNN, as she broke down into tears.
Hala Abdan, a lawyer, said her 20-year-old son’s left foot was amputated after he was injured by a drone strike in December. “I struggle to provide him anything, just like all the Palestinian people,” she said. “It has been 200 days full of suffering that one can barely bear… 200 days of catastrophe.”
