For more than six weeks this winter, I lost all contact with my family in Gaza. Having to spend every day not knowing if my loved ones were alive or dead was one of the hardest things I’ve ever experienced – and it brought up trauma from when my brother, sister and their families were killed by an Israeli bomb in 2014.
When I finally got back in communication with my family in February, I learned they had been sheltering in a UNRWA school with thousands of others. The conditions they described were horrific. There was no sanitation or hygiene, no food, no blankets. My 26-year-old cousin died in that school from a treatable infection, because there was simply no medicine to help her.
My family has since been displaced again, this time to Rafah. At least when they were in the school, there were walls that could have protected them from Israel’s bombardment. Today, they live in a tent, waiting for the next bomb to drop. What will happen to them now that Israel has invaded the city?
