“I left the north for Gaza City, then went to Rafah, then Deir al-Balah, and later Al-Wusta. I suffered greatly on the road. We carried our belongings and ran from place to place, from tent to tent. Every time we were displaced, my only worry was: where are we supposed to go?”
Hala repeats: “Where are we supposed to go?”—a question haunting Gazans who face Israeli aggression without a safe shelter or a clear destination. They flee from one death chasing them, only to meet another waiting ahead. Shelters are overflowing with displaced people, to the point that the streets and public places have also been turned into camps, where the most basic standards of privacy and human dignity have disappeared.
Hala fled with her husband and children from the north of the Strip to the south, in a bitter journey that cost her immense suffering and exposed her to violence in all its forms. She says: “We are from the north, and at the beginning of the aggression, the situation there was unbearable, with bombing from all sides. So we fled through the checkpoint and went to the south. We thought it would be safer there, but we were shocked to find it was even worse in every way.”
She adds: “We were forced to live in a tent, the first time in my life I ever experience such a thing. I never imagined myself living in a place like that. I had my home, my space, my dignity. But it didn’t stop there—my life turned into constant problems, beatings, and insults from my husband.”
In the camp, where there is no privacy or room to rest, the living hardship became an excuse for her husband to physically abuse her and deprive her economically. The small, worn-out tent barely fit them, and their mounting conflicts made it feel even smaller. Hala says: “I have four children, and we all used to live in peace before. However, during the Israeli aggression, and all the hardship it caused, I began to face psychological, physical, and economic violence from my husband. He beat us, insulted us, swore at us in front of people, and blackmailed us with food. He would tell us, ‘you’re not worth feeding,’ always belittling us.”
Displacement and homelessness also revealed an unfamiliar side of her husband. According to Hala, he was unable to take responsibility or manage the family’s affairs under the pressure of displacement. She recounts: “He would leave in the morning and we would go without food all day. Every woman’s husband would bring her food, but I had nothing. He would leave in the morning and come back at sunset with nothing.” She adds: “I’m the one who goes to get water and food. I would pray at dawn and then rush straight in my prayer clothes to stand in line for aid distributions, despite being terrified. Sometimes I could get food, and sometimes I couldn’t—along with humiliation, sexual harassment, and even scalding burns when hot food spilled on us because of the crowding.”
Hala faced sexual harassment and attempts of exploitation because she had to beg for food or aid to feed her children, while her husband failed to provide for them and instead took out his anger on her, beating her constantly. She sighs deeply as she says: “I’m exhausted. I’m tired and numb. My body hurts, my heart hurts. I pretend to be strong in front of my children, but I’m broken. The pain will go away, but the break is impossible to heal. It can be repaired, but things will never be the same. He turned me into an outcast in the camp, humiliating me in front of everyone. The whole camp could hear us, and after he was done, he would kick me out of the tent, and my female neighbors in the camp would come to comfort me.”
The violence that Hala’s husband inflicted on her was so frequent that she described it as “a daily meal,” and the abuse reached a point where she was forced to turn to the camp residents to rescue her from him. She explains: “I kept telling him to stop, that I didn’t want to disgrace myself. I was already broken. My family wasn’t with me—my brothers had been martyred. I was unable to take control because I had no source of income, my son even had to go to the aid distribution area to get us food under bombing and the risk of being killed.”
Faced with relentless abuse, deprivation, and hunger, Hala was forced to seek help from someone, hoping he would provide her with a food basket or financial support to sustain her family’s needs. However, instead of help, she was blackmailed: “He took my number under the pretext of helping me, then started sending me messages on my cell phone asking me to talk to him in exchange for his help. Thank God I was aware of what was happening and reported him.”
Hala reached a point where she could no longer bear her husband’s cruelty. Even her eldest son supported her decision to leave the tent and leave her life of abuse behind. She would begin a new journey with her children, not knowing where to go, and with no less difficulty than her previous displacement episodes, but at least without domestic violence. She recalls, “My husband kept mistreating me and insulting me and threatening to disgrace me, so my 16-year-old son said to me, ‘Why are you putting up with this? Enough is enough!’ I couldn’t believe that someone would support me, so I packed my things and left my husband’s tent. At that moment, my husband said: ‘Don’t you ever think of coming back.’ So, I sought refuge with my sister.”
But even there, her ordeal continued: “She tolerated me for a day or two, then told me: ‘I can handle you, but not your kids.’ So where am I supposed to go? Where can I leave my children? Should I go back to the camps to be exploited, or return to my husband to be beaten and deprived, or end up in the street? Where am I supposed to go?”
In tents that were hastily erected, hundreds of displaced men and women share cramped spaces without basic amenities, turning them into places of double suffering. They provide nothing but a fragile roof and a harsher reality that will not fade away unless permanent solutions are found, including reconstruction projects that guarantee safe housing, and that specifically account for the needs of women and girls, protecting them from the violence fueled by loss of privacy and displacement.
Disclaimer: The names used in the previous testimony are aliases.
“This document has been produced with the support of the Heinrich-Böll-Stiftung. The views expressed herein are those of the author(s) and therefore do not necessarily reflect the opinion of the Heinrich-Böll-Stiftung.”
