Over recent months, the deteriorating humanitarian situation in the Gaza Strip has turned securing life’s most basic needs — water, food, and safety — into a daily tribulation. For many, even intense efforts will fail to provide a full stomach or a restful night.

Anas Arafat, a father of three living in Gaza City, described wartime life to The Times of Israel as a relentless struggle for survival from morning to night. “We focus on the basics,” he said.

Arafat lives in a building in the al-Daraj neighborhood in the northwestern part of Gaza City. Arafat has moved between several neighborhoods in the city, his hometown, during the war due to overcrowding and fears of IDF strikes. He is currently renting an apartment from a friend.

Unlike hundreds of thousands of other Gazans living in tents in displacement camps, Arafat has access to a jerry-rigged but functioning bathroom at home. He also still has his belongings, including clothing and kitchenware, from before the war.

With a nest egg that allows him to buy food, water, and power to charge his phone, Arafat is in many ways better situated than many others in Gaza who, lacking his means, have been left destitute, practically homeless and at the mercy of infrequent aid handouts requiring long journeys and deadly risks.

Yet even his relatively tolerable existence is still one of near-constant hardship. For Arafat and others like him who spoke to The Times of Israel to describe daily life in the Strip, making it through each day is a Sisyphean struggle filled with hunger, darkness and grave uncertainty.

“Yesterday morning, I went looking for someone selling water for washing and bathing,” Arafat told The Times of Israel via telephone. “I started around 7 a.m., and only found someone around 9 a.m.. After that, I looked for drinking water — two or three jugs. We need water for washing and for laundry every day. Even the water we buy for drinking isn’t really safe, but it’s all there is.”

While Arafat’s neighborhood has been targeted by the IDF multiple times during the war, the building he currently lives in remains habitable.

According to satellite imagery and UN statements, large parts of Gaza have been completely destroyed, including the northern tip of the Gaza Strip, eastern Gaza City, much of Rafah, and large sections of Khan Younis in the south of the Strip. In January, the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs announced that 92 percent of buildings in Gaza had been damaged or destroyed.

However, in western Gaza City, where the IDF’s ground operations were conducted primarily in the early months of the war, there are still areas with habitable buildings. The same is true for Deir al-Balah in the center of the Strip, where the IDF has conducted few ground operations.

Life in Gaza before the war was not exactly easy either. Since 2007, when the Hamas terror group seized power in a violent coup, Israeli restrictions on the movement of people and goods in and out of the Strip, as well as Hamas’s own policies, made the enclave into something of an economic basket case, with sky-high unemployment and a heavy reliance on foreign aid.

‘Every day, each member of the family gets one pita to last 24 hours. If we bathe once a week, that’s a success’

Israel said its embargo on Gaza was necessary to keep Hamas from building up its armed wing. Despite its efforts, Hamas still managed to develop a formidable fighting force along with miles of tunnels to support its activities beneath the Strip.

War erupted on October 7, 2023, as Hamas unleashed that force on southern Israel in a surprise attack, killing some 1,200 people and kidnapping 251, mostly civilians. Gazan terrorists still hold 50 hostages. Israel has said it will end the war and allow aid to flood the Strip the moment Hamas releases the hostages and disarms, blaming the terror group for the woes that have befallen Gaza’s people.

While lower-income segments of society before the war were dependent on humanitarian assistance, and electricity and other essential needs were often in short supply, it was possible in the past to make a living in Gaza.

Arafat, a former lawyer who was part of the Strip’s sizable self-supporting professional class, described going out to restaurants, visiting friends and experiencing a thriving social scene in his former neighborhood. Others talked about going to cafes or the beach from time to time.

One thing that remains in Gaza is cellular reception, allowing The Times of Israel to speak with residents to understand what daily life consists of. The reception relies on local infrastructure operated by Palestinian telecom companies, some of which was damaged during the war and partially repaired by Palestinians in coordination with Israel. It is also supported by cell towers located inside Israeli territory near the Gaza border.

All other trappings of modern life, like consistent access to food and water, are gone, Gazans say.

“Every day, each member of the family gets one pita to last 24 hours,” said Mouin Hilu, a Gaza City father of 10 and grandfather of two. “If not, they go to sleep hungry. For the past three or four months, we haven’t been eating properly. Every night, we go to bed hungry – waiting for morning, hoping maybe tomorrow there will be........

© The Times of Israel