GAZA — Alaa Ahmed and his family wait on the side of the road with their luggage. They’ve just survived a night of harsh bombing by Israel on the area of western Rafah where they were sheltering. Now, early in the morning, they’re looking for transportation to Deir al-Balah in central Gaza. But drivers are asking for fees of $300 or $400.
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“This is an exploitation,” Ahmed, 42, says. “We are living in very harsh conditions of displacement. We fled from our home in the urban Jabaliya refugee camp in northern Gaza. We thought we would be displaced for a couple of days and return again, but six months have passed and we have been displaced seven times. Rafah was our last stop. We hoped to return home and not to be displaced again, not to start a new journey of suffering.”
Since the Israeli military began its ground offensive on Rafah in early May, more than a million people — most of whom have been -displaced multiple times — have fled the city, according to the UN Agency for Palestinian Refugees (UNRWA).
“What is important for us is to escape the hell of the bombing,” says Ahmed, who decided to share a vehicle and split the $300 fee with another displaced family. The 16 members of two families tied their luggage to the roof of the small vehicle and squeezed inside.
Sky high prices
Magdy Karaja, 50, from the Shati refugee camp in northern Gaza, also fled his Rafah shelter. But he was not able to come to a compromise with a driver to take him to the Mawassi humanitarian zone, south of Khan Younis. So he and his wife had to walk, carrying their luggage and tent, and pushing their disabled child, Nada, in a wheelchair.
“You have to pay for everything in war.”
“I spent 48 hours trying to reach an agreement with a driver to transport my family and me at a reasonable price,” he says, adding that most of the drivers asked for 0 to 0 — up from before the war. “Transportation fares in Gaza are now like flight prices,” he says, noting that he paid 0 for a flight from Cairo to Istanbul two years ago.
He explains that his family’s constant displacement since the war began has come with constant costs — for transportation, food and other basic necessities: “Our tent cost 0. You have to pay for everything in the war.”
Massive road destruction
Amid the chaos of the Israel-Hamas war, displaced Palestinians in Gaza — more than 80% of the population — face a serious transportation crisis due to vehicle scarcity and the high cost of fuel
Ismail Abdel Karim, a 29-year-old Palestinian driver, said 1 liter of gasoline costs , compared to before the war, “so it’s natural for transportation fares to rise.”
This is compounded by damage to roads. According to the Palestinian Transport Ministry, the Israeli military has destroyed 945 kilometers of roads across Gaza, or 65% of the road network, representing about billion in damages. About 55,000 vehicles have been destroyed or damaged, or 60% of the licensed vehicles in the strip.
We wanted to flee to the central region, but after the [Nuseirat camp] massacre, we decided not to go.
Faced with these obstacles, Wafaa Zoarab, who is in her 30s, decided to stay in Rafah, saying there is no safe place in the entire Gaza Strip: the Israeli military has carried out massacres across Gaza, she said.
Following the Israeli operation to rescue four hostages that killed more than 270 Palestinians in the central Nuseirat camp over the weekend, Zoarab decided to die at her home: “We wanted to flee to the central region, but after the massacre, we decided not to go.”
