Fatimah al-Kurd

35, a divorced mother of four from Jabalya, related in a testimony she gave on 14 May 2026:

I have four children: Subhi Ghraib, 20, Qamar, 18, Rizeq, 17 and Sidra, 10. We are displaced and are staying in a tent in the city of Deir al-Balah.

The children and I had to flee Jabalya at the very beginning of the war, because the town was heavily bombed. We took only a few clothes with us and left everything we had behind.

We reached Deir al-Balah and stayed with relatives for about three months. Those were three months of fear and suffering. The war was brutal, with very heavy bombing everywhere. I was terrified of losing one of my children and dying myself. During that period, many food and hygiene products disappeared from the markets and I couldn’t meet my children’s most basic needs.

After three months we were displaced again, when the military threatened to bomb buildings near the house we were staying in. We went to relatives in the city of Rafah and stayed with them for four months, which were also very hard.

Then we were displaced again, and went back to Deir al-Balah. This time we stayed in a tent in a camp set up on the grounds of Shuhadaa al-Aqsa Hospital. In August 2024 our tent was damaged when Israeli fighter jets bombed tents in the hospital yard. Tents burned down and there were dead people and body parts everywhere. My children and I saw horrific things.

We suffered very much in that camp. The bathrooms were shared by all the displaced people, and we had to stand in line for a long time just to go in. The tents were packed tightly together and there was no privacy at all.

At the beginning of 2025, the first ceasefire came into effect. We went back to Jabalya and stayed there about two months. We felt some relief when the bombing and attacks stopped, but then the war started again, and was even more brutal than before. We left again and went to Deir al-Balah.

That displacement was especially difficult. I didn’t know where to go or how to get there. There was hardly any transportation, and I couldn’t find anyone to take us to the central Strip to escape death. We fled in very hard conditions, under gunfire, especially from quadcopters that followed us the whole way. When we reached Deir al-Balah, I was exhausted and didn’t know where to go. We wandered around until I found an area where displaced people were staying and set up my worn tent there.

We stayed there, in very bad humanitarian conditions, until the ceasefire took effect in October 2025. I thought I’d survived the cruel war, that it was over and that life in Gaza would go back to what it was. But then I realized the war wasn’t really over. The bombings continue everywhere, you can’t escape the sound, and there are dead and wounded people everywhere. My family’s home in Jabalya was bombed to the ground and the whole area we lived in has been declared a closed military zone. I realized we would continue living in a tent.

Then winter came, which was a disaster for us. Every time it rained our tent flooded, and I could do nothing. We’ve been living in this tent for nine months, and the suffering continues.

But the worst thing now is the attacks by rodents. You can’t imagine how many rats, mice and other rodents are in the tents. They come day and night, in huge numbers and all sizes. I stay awake all night, trying to chase them or kill them in the tent.

Two days ago, I was woken by my daughter Sidra screaming that a mouse had bitten her toes. She was screaming and sobbing with fear.

My daughter Qamar, who is in the 12th grade, is also suffering a lot from this situation. Every day we shift her books and notebooks from place to place, so the rats won’t eat them. They dig under the sides of the tent and hide there, and then come into the tent. I’m afraid they’ll even gnaw through the tent itself, because it’s made of nylon and tarps.

At night we’re literally surrounded by swarms of rodents. We’ve heard estimates that there are about four million rats in the Gaza Strip by now – more than the number of people. Nothing stops them from entering our tent. Sometimes I find them gnawing on bread or other food we have, and I immediately throw it away so we don’t catch a disease.

Honestly, I don’t know how to get rid of them. I tried scattering poison, but it didn’t help. I feel they are only multiplying, because of the piles of garbage around us, the sewage water, and the scraps of food that people throw right by the tents.

We’re living in a massive environmental disaster, and we have no idea how to deal with it. The authorities here have no plan to deal with the rodents endangering our lives every day.

About a week ago, at night, I heard noises under the tent tarp. I turned my phone flashlight on, lifted the tarp and saw a huge rat the size of a cat. I turned off the light and ran away screaming. The children and I were afraid to go back into the tent. The rats are enormous and we’re afraid they will attack us.

I feel that the rodents are simply living with us and we can’t get rid of them. On top of that, snakes have also started appearing. That’s another disaster with no solution.

Now we’re at the start of summer. The tent is already a furnace, with flies and mosquitoes everywhere. At night we get bitten by unusually large mosquitoes in huge numbers. In the morning, we wake up at six o’clock from fly bites, which also swarm here in huge numbers. The bites cause us allergic reactions and swelling.

I do everything I can to keep the tent clean, but the flies and mosquitoes never leave us, day and night.

Our tent is like a grave. It’s basically a shelter for rodents and insects. I hate it, but we have nowhere else to go.

* Testimony given to B’Tselem field researcher Olfat al-Kurd on 14 May 2026

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