Tuesday, January 9, 2024
Year : 1, Issue : 19
Huddling around a bewildering tangle of cables and extension leads plugged into a hospital power outlet, displaced Gazan men are pursuing a critical but elusive goal: getting their phones charged.
In wartime Gaza, a charged phone is nothing less than a lifeline. It serves to check on loved ones after Israeli bombardments, helps find out where food and water might be available, and provides light in tents after darkness falls.
“Every day we come here for three or four hours and waste time to charge our phones,” said Mohammed Abu Skheta, who fled with his family, including a baby boy, from Al-Shati refugee camp in northern Gaza to a tent in Rafah, southern Gaza. “It’s a dream to fully charge it. It’s very difficult. You can charge it to 50 or 60%, 70% at most,” he said.
Phones are not the only devices in need of regular charging. Mohamad Abu Taha, a barber in Rafah, said he was relying on a solar panel at the family home to recharge his electric razor in between jobs.
“For almost every haircut, I send my nephew to charge the razor. I have to inform the customer that if it’s sunny I can work, if not then I cannot,” he said. One tailor in Rafah has got around the lack of electricity by converting a dismantled child’s bicycle into a pedal dynamo to power his sewing machine.
No Place To Charge
The war in Gaza started when Hamas militants stormed into southern Israel on Oct 7, killing 1,200 people and kidnapping 240 hostages, of whom more than 130 are still being held captive, according to Israel’s tally.
Vowing to destroy Hamas, Israel has responded with a siege, bombardment and ground invasion of Gaza which have killed more than 24,000 Palestinians, according to Gaza health officials. Most of the population is displaced, and severe shortages of food, water, electricity and medicines have resulted in a humanitarian catastrophe, according to the United Nations.
Charging a phone has become one of the challenges of daily life, as time-consuming and frustrating as the search for bread or water. Alongside phones, people bring such batteries to charge so that they can then power devices they need in their tents.
Volunteers at the hospital organise a rota allowing people to charge for a certain period of time. The system helps avoid tensions by giving access to precious sockets to as many people as possible, but demand is too high to satisfy everyone. Marouf said he needed to charge his battery to power medical devices for his children, who have respiratory conditions. “We got them a large battery and came to charge it, because hospitals are full,” he said.
“It lasts us for one day, or one day and a half at most, not more. We use it for lighting only,” said Mohamad Al-Shamali, who is displaced from Gaza City.
“Calls and telecoms are down so we don’t have internet. We try as much as we can to secure lighting, to see the roads we are walking on and inside the tent we are in, no more than that.”
