When the war forced Nasser al-Zaanin to flee his home in northern Gaza in October, he, along with his adult sons and grandchildren, moved to a school that had been turned into a shelter.
There, at the Abdul Kareem al-Aklouk school in the town of Deir al Balah, he helped set up a system of committees to improve life for families who had taken refuge. The committees oversaw food, water and medical needs, and they had one red line: No armed men were allowed in the compound.
Residents, already forced to evacuate their homes because of Israel’s intense bombardment, wanted to avoid becoming a target for Israeli forces hunting down Hamas militants. Every few days in recent weeks, Israel has hit a school building turned shelter where it has said militants are hiding, including on Saturday, when it struck two compounds in northern Gaza that it said Hamas was using as a military base.
Early in the conflict, Mr. Zaanin said, Hamas had wanted to station police officers at the shelter where he was staying. The group said it would ensure security, but he said the residents had gathered to stop that.
“All the families agreed,” said Mr. Zaanin, 56, who once worked as a civil servant for the Palestinian Authority in Gaza.
“We simply want to save all families, women and children and not let there be any potential threat against us because of the existence of police and members of the Hamas government,” he said. The police, Mr. al-Zaanin added, could stand outside the building but not inside.
Several other residents of school shelters in central Gaza recounted similar stories, though attitudes in other areas were unknown. It is hard to know how widespread the phenomenon is, and whether the armed militia are from Hamas, Islamic Jihad or other armed gangs, but these residents’ experiences suggest that at least some evacuees have blocked armed militias from moving into these shelters.
“We will quickly kick anyone who has a gun or a rifle out of this school,” said Saleh al-Kafarneh, 62, who lives at another government school in Deir al Balah and said he locked the gates at night. “We don’t allow anyone to ruin life here, or cause any strike against those civilians and families.” A third resident, Mohammed Shehda al-Obwaini, 57, said he would fight any armed men if he found them in a school shelter.
The residents’ testimonies also suggested that Hamas’s grip on the enclave may be weakened by the war and that ad hoc community groups are starting to operate outside the organization’s control, at least on a small scale.
The accounts, which cannot be independently confirmed, come as Israel has sharply increased the rate of its airstrikes on schools turned shelters to target what it calls Hamas command-and-control centers. It says militants have “cynically exploited” these sensitive sites to plan operations. Hamas, a militant group rather than a conventional army, has used both civilian structures and tunnels as defenses. It was not possible to confirm whether armed or unarmed militants stay in the school shelters.
“Strikes against this infrastructure are conducted in accordance with international law, with the purpose of preventing the restoration of terrorist organizations’ capabilities,” an Israeli military statement said last month. The military also says it acts using precise intelligence and takes steps to minimize civilian harm.
Hundreds of people have been killed in the attacks, according to local health officials. In one particularly deadly example on Aug. 10, the Gaza Civil Defense emergency service said that more than 90 people were killed in a strike on a school in northern Gaza. The toll could not be confirmed independently. Israel said that it had killed at least 31 Islamic Jihad and Hamas fighters and that the compound itself had not been severely damaged.
In Saturday,’s strikes, Gazan rescue services said the first had killed four people, and medics said the second had killed three and wounded 20 more.
The Israeli military has said that it has found weapons stored at schools or struck armed militants there. In some cases, the military has said that Hamas used schools as a “hiding place to direct and plan numerous attacks” against Israeli troops.
More recently, some of the military’s reports about the strikes have not mentioned weapons, and on Saturday, it did not say whether the militants targeted in the strike were armed.
The military, in recent weeks, has not explained in its statements how it arrived at its intelligence conclusions or given more details about whom it has targeted.
The United Nations, the European Union and several governments have sharply criticized Israel’s government over the strikes. Senior U.N. officials argue that to target schools — many of which are run by the United Nations — violates international law and that Israel has a duty to protect civilians caught in the war.
Formal education has been suspended in Gaza because of the war, and hundreds of schools have been turned into shelters. The shelters have played a vital role in Gaza, which has been shattered by more than 10 months of war. Almost all of the enclave’s 2.2 million residents have fled their homes, and some people say they have been forced to move as many as 10 times, often in response to Israeli warnings.
In addition, more than half of all residential buildings in the enclave have been damaged or destroyed, mainly by Israeli airstrikes, the World Bank said in January. At the same time, more than 80 percent of Gaza’s schools and all 12 of its universities have been severely damaged or destroyed, according to the United Nations.
Some people have stayed with relatives. Hundreds of thousands now live in makeshift tents. Others have decamped to overcrowded school compounds, with families living in classrooms, corridors and yards.
In the close-knit Gazan society, established families seem to have sway in the shelters.
“We are the oldest generation here,” Mr. Kafarneh said. As new people arrive, he said, “We ask about that person, their political views, just to be aware of who they are.”
“We don’t allow anyone to enter with their rifle, whether he is a militant or from a big tribe or family.”
Israel’s recent attacks on the schools have deepened the misery and sense of insecurity for civilians who live there, not least because the attacks often come without warning.
Mai Riyad al-Basyouni, 22, who lived at a government school in Deir al Balah with her husband and 3-month-old daughter, said that women and children were particularly at risk because they stayed indoors at the school, whereas men were often at the markets during the day.
She said she had been at the school for nine months and wanted to leave because of the airstrikes but could not afford to rent elsewhere. A particular worry was shrapnel, which she said she feared could pierce her tent with ease.
“Hearing the news of targeting more schools makes my daily life more miserable, stressful and traumatic,” she said.
Mohammed Shehda al-Obwaini, 57, said he used to live in a school shelter west of Deir al Balah but left after it was hit a few weeks ago and has now pitched a tent for himself and his family near a soccer field.
He described the attack on the school where he had stayed as terrifying.
“Is Israel fighting the Palestinians or Hamas?” he said. “We have had enough suffering and killing. We have enough death among us.”
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