Displaced Palestinians arrive at a makeshift tent camp in Rafah, Gaza. Photo / AP
Displaced Palestinians arrive at a makeshift tent camp in Rafah, Gaza. Photo / AP
Recent satellite imagery shows an influx of displaced Palestinians into Rafah, the Gaza Strip’s southernmost region, where about 1.25 million people are now living in squalid, cramped conditions.
This increase is visible in commercially available satellite imagery from Planet Labs that was taken over the past two months. Itreveals the scale of the dire humanitarian crisis in Rafah that has worsened as the Israeli offensive against Hamas has intensified in central and southern Gaza.
A part of northwest Rafah has become the primary area for new impromptu encampments to house displaced Gaza residents. Yet tents are also visible in areas across Rafah’s approximately 65 square kilometres
Satellite images reveal the influx of evacuees in Southern Gaza. Graphic / Via The New York Times
With little space available to shelter indoors, “Rafah has become a city covered with plastic sheeting,” said Juliette Touma, director of communications for the United Nations Relief and Works Agency.
The arrival of displaced people in Rafah in recent weeks has led to the spread of tent camps farther from established shelters. These areas come with challenges including a lack of electricity, clean water, bathrooms and other basics, as well as less access to the limited aid trickling into Rafah, said Shaina Low, a communications adviser for the Norwegian Refugee Council.
“Because these are informal camps without official leadership or representation, aid agencies have no one to coordinate distribution with, forcing those seeking assistance to go to established sites to receive aid,” Low said.
While aid groups including the Norwegian Refugee Council have provided some displaced people with tents, many people have been forced to build their own. Thousands more have struggled without any kind of shelter.
“Streets and open spaces are now filled with homemade structures and tents,” Low said. “Makeshift shelters constructed from salvaged materials are unable to withstand increasingly cold, wet and windy winter weather.”
Satellite imagery from Planet Labs taken January 14 shows the rapid expansion of one of these tent camps in an open area along the border between Gaza and Egypt that was empty in early December.
Tent camps expand as Palestinians flee Israeli bombardment. Graphic / Via The New York Times
Those staying in official shelters are considered somewhat safer from Israeli airstrikes than people living in makeshift tent camps. Shelters for displaced people are protected under humanitarian law, according to UN officials. That said, at least 330 displaced people staying in UN shelters across the Gaza Strip have been killed since the war began October 7, according to the United Nations Relief and Works Agency.
Since December 1, the Israeli military has ordered civilians to evacuate from large swaths of the central and southern regions of Deir al Balah and Khan Younis, areas that were sheltering more than 550,000 internally displaced people and were home to more than 1 million people before the war, according to the United Nations.
Many of these displaced people have fled to Rafah. By mid-December, Rafah was estimated to be sheltering more than 1 million people and had become Gaza’s most densely populated area, with a roughly fourfold increase in population compared with before the war. With at least 100,000 additional people having poured in, the region is struggling to meet the immense humanitarian need.
“Rafah is one of the poorest parts of Gaza,” Touma said. “The infrastructure is not at all suitable to absorb this huge influx.”
The number of people registered at shelters in Rafah was 978,000 as of January 14, up from 705,000 on December 25 and 463,000 on December 1, according to UN data. Hundreds of thousands of additional people are estimated to be staying in the region unregistered with the shelter system.
Many within Gaza have been displaced multiple times since the onset of Israel’s bombing campaign and ground invasion in response to Hamas’ attack in Israel in October. Relief officials say that repeated displacements make it difficult to accurately track the movement of people over time.
With a vast majority of Gaza’s population displaced, aid groups and the United Nations have been struggling to keep up with the staggering demand for help in Rafah and across the Gaza Strip. Even when aid is available, relief officials say that its delivery has been impeded by exhaustive inspections by Israeli authorities and that aid trucks sometimes come under fire from Israeli forces.
