A deadly Israeli strike on a school turned shelter in northern Gaza on Saturday exposed an agonizing dilemma for civilians in Gaza seeking safety after 10 months of war.
They could stay at the schools turned shelters, hoping for a modicum of security in the desperate conditions of Gaza. Or they can flee, knowing that the shelters themselves can become targets.
The school year has been abandoned in Gaza, and tens of thousands of civilians have flocked to the compounds since the earliest days of the war, trying to build temporary lives in classrooms and corridors, or pitching makeshift tents in schoolyards.
Conditions are atrocious, residents have said, but the schools, which offer walls and access to limited plumbing, are attractive for the simple reason that the alternatives are worse. Israel’s airstrikes and ground assaults continue around the territory. Extreme hunger is widespread. And diseases are spreading fast in squalid, crowded camps and the ruins of former homes.
As a result, schools have been preferable options for many because they have offered the promise of better security in a conflict that has killed nearly 40,000 people, according to Gaza’s health ministry.
Ahmed Tahseen Abd Shabat, a 25-year-old who had been living at the Hafsa government school in Gaza City with his two brothers and parents, told The New York Times by phone that they arrived there as a last resort after fleeing 10 times since Oct. 7, when Hamas led a deadly attack on Israel that began the conflict.
“I don’t consider moving out of the school despite the constant targeting of schools because there is no safe zone in Gaza,” said Mr. Shabat, who said he had been completing a master’s degree in law at Palestine University before the war. “Areas previously officially declared as safe zones are now the complete opposite.”
In recent weeks, he said, people had moved to sleeping inside classrooms rather than in the open air, believing that would offer a degree of protection against shrapnel in the event of a strike. As a result, he said, classrooms were becoming more crowded.
At present, his family was sharing a classroom with three other families, totaling around 20 people, and some of the men were sleeping in hallways to give the women and children more space.
“There is a complete lack of privacy,” he said.
Israel’s strikes on school grounds, which are just one element of its current campaign, appear to reflect a shift in its efforts to root Hamas out from Gaza. Military analysts say that the Israeli military has largely destroyed Hamas’ main battalions as fighting units and that it has also destroyed the group’s network of tunnels, forcing more fighters above ground.
The Israeli military says that Hamas had “cynically exploited” schools, hospitals and shelters, using them as bases and civilians as human shields. It has said its strikes “against this infrastructure are conducted in accordance with international law.”
With each of the strikes it has launched on school areas in recent weeks, the Israeli military has said that it has taken steps “to mitigate the risk of harming civilians.” On Saturday, the military said in a statement that those steps included the use of precise munitions, aerial surveillance and intelligence information.
In previous high-profile attacks, such as one in July that Israel says killed an important Hamas commander, the military appears not to have issued warnings to civilians in advance to avoid alerting its target. At least 90 people in the vicinity of the strike were killed that day, according to the Gazan health ministry.
Around 200 U.N. buildings have been hit since the start of the conflict, a number not previously seen in the organization’s history, said Juliette Touma, the director of communications for the main agency that aids Palestinians, UNRWA. During a more limited conflict in Gaza in 2014, she said, only one U.N. building was hit.
U.N. experts in April expressed concern about what they said was the “systemic destruction” of the enclave’s education system — a process they called “scholasticide.” Ms. Touma argued that the more recent attacks would have a longer-term impact once the war is over.
“Many of those schools cannot be used because they were bombed or they might have unexploded ordnance in them,” she said, adding “What will that mean for the education journey of children in Gaza?”
The United Nations has submitted the coordinates of all of its buildings in Gaza to the warring parties, Ms. Touma said, adding that it has also called for an independent investigation to determine whether the schools have been used as military bases.
“U.N. facilities must never be used for military and fighting purposes, and they should be protected in times of conflict,” she said.
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