Hardships mount as Gazans toil

Caught in the fighting between Israel and Hamas, Gaza's civilians are increasingly struggling to get by. There is no electricity 21 hours a day because power lines have been hit. Water taps have run dry because there's no power to their fuel pumps and tens of thousands of displaced sleep on the floors of schools and hospitals.

The hardship is felt more keenly as Muslims on Monday start observing the Eid el-Fitr holiday, which is meant to be a joyous time of festive meals, shared traditional sweets and family visits. Here is a glimpse of life in wartime Gaza.

Men kneel in prayer on blankets laid out in the courtyard of a UN school in Gaza's Rimal neighborhood, one of dozens of emergency shelters for those who have fled the fighting.

It's the morning of Eid el-Fitr, the three-day holiday that caps the Muslim fasting month of Ramadan. In normal times, the men would have worshipped at their neighborhood mosques.

However, 20 mosques have been hit by Israeli warplanes so far, according to Palestinian officials. Israel said Hamas stores weapons and rockets in houses of worship.

So the men prefer to perform Eid prayers in the relative safety of the school.

"We can't go to the mosque because of the shelling," says 39-year-old Mahmoud Nofal, who has lived at the shelter with 30 members of his extended family for more than a week.

Near the worshippers, many are still sleeping, some atop desks they pulled into the courtyard, others alongside walls.

After prayers, the men line up to pick up their food rations of pita bread, tuna, corned beef, processed cheese and extra holiday cookies for the children.

The UN aid agency that runs Gaza schools has been around for more than six decades. It was established after more than 700,000 Palestinians fled or were driven from their homes in the 1948 war that created Israel.

Nofal is a descendant of the 1948 refugees.

"Today, I feel like a refugee again," he says.

Luxury items

Electricity and water have become luxury items.

Supply was spotty even before the war, as a result of an Israeli-Egyptian border blockade tightly enforced after Hamas seized Gaza in 2007. In recent years, Gazans have adapted to scheduled power cuts - in the best case eight hours on one day, eight hours off the next.

Gaza gets its electricity from Israeli and Egyptian lines - for payment - and from a power plant in Gaza.

The Israeli lines have been damaged in the fighting, leaving only supplies from Egypt and the power plant, says the local electricity distribution company's official, Jamal al-Dardasawi.

Gazans are now without power for 21 hours each day. The blackouts could get worse if the power plant runs out of fuel, as it has repeatedly in the past.

Without power to run pumps, there is no water, especially in Gaza's high-rise buildings.

Rawan Taha, a 39-year-old housewife, lives in such an apartment tower. She says she last showered three days ago. When the water is on, she fills her bathtub, pots and empty bottles. Gaza's tap water is not drinkable, and her family pays 20 shekels ($6) each day for drinking water.

"Israel took us back 70 years," she says. "No water, no power, no security, no Internet, no cellphones, nothing."

(China Daily 07/29/2014 page12)