By Saleh Salem
RAFAH, Gaza Strip (Reuters) – Life for Gaza teacher Inas Al-Baz has shrunk to a daily search for food and water for her family, but she breaks the monotony as often as she can, whether it’s with a fresh ingredient for her cooking pot or study time with her children in their tent.
The Al-Baz family, from Al-Shati refugee camp, are among an estimated 1.5 million Palestinians crammed into the Rafah area in southern Gaza after Israel’s military onslaught on the crowded strip of land displaced them from their homes.
“My children have hobbies and are good at school, thank God. They used to have their ambitions and their own activities like all children,” she said in the family’s shelter made from nylon sheets nailed to plywood strips.
“But now it’s all about ‘Mother, what will we eat? What will we drink?'”
Al-Baz said her children were fed up with canned food, one of the only things she can find to feed them, but she was happy that thanks to recent rainfall a type of edible plant called mallow had grown nearby and she had some for the next meal.
She was washing chopped mallow leaves in a pot on the ground, in preparation for cooking them on a small camping gas stove.
She said she had just recently got hold of the stove, a marked improvement after months of cooking on an open fire that produced fumes that made one of her daughters sick.
Daily chores such as making bread, sweeping sand out of the shelter and washing clothes by hand in small buckets were time-consuming, but Al-Baz was determined to keep up her children’s education.
“I don’t waste time in the tent. I teach them Koran, I teach them poetry,” she said.
“Our children are suffering, deprived of their rights. But we, as Palestinian women, are patient and we work hard in pushing our children to be the best children,” she said.
Kneeling inside the tent, her daughter Anood recited a poem in Arabic with a lively intonation. Al-Baz sat with her son Swalem, teaching him basic English. The children also enjoyed some play time flying a kite outside the shelter.
“I consider the Palestinian women among the strongest women in the world,” said Al-Baz.
“We, as Palestinian women, suffer a lot, a lot, a lot in these tents. But despite this, we can adapt to the circumstances and we can live our lives,” she said.
The war was triggered by Hamas militants who broke out of Gaza to attack southern Israel on Oct. 7, killing 1,200 people and taking 253 hostage, according to Israel.
Vowing to destroy Hamas, Israel has responded with an air and ground assault that has killed more than 29,400 people, according to Gaza health authorities.
The offensive has displaced most of the territory’s population and caused widespread hunger and disease.
(Writing by Estelle Shirbon; Editing by Nick Macfie)
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