Gazan Family Uprooted by Renewed War Faces Deepening Hardship

Displaced Palestinian woman Huda Junaid collects belongings inside her tent as she prepares to flee with her family after the Israeli army issued evacuation orders for a number of neighborhoods, following heavy Israeli strikes, in Jabalia in the northern Gaza Strip March 19, 2025. REUTERS/Mahmoud
Displaced Palestinian woman Huda Junaid collects belongings inside her tent as she prepares to flee with her family after the Israeli army issued evacuation orders for a number of neighborhoods, following heavy Israeli strikes, in Jabalia in the northern Gaza Strip March 19, 2025. REUTERS/Mahmoud
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Gazan Family Uprooted by Renewed War Faces Deepening Hardship

Displaced Palestinian woman Huda Junaid collects belongings inside her tent as she prepares to flee with her family after the Israeli army issued evacuation orders for a number of neighborhoods, following heavy Israeli strikes, in Jabalia in the northern Gaza Strip March 19, 2025. REUTERS/Mahmoud
Displaced Palestinian woman Huda Junaid collects belongings inside her tent as she prepares to flee with her family after the Israeli army issued evacuation orders for a number of neighborhoods, following heavy Israeli strikes, in Jabalia in the northern Gaza Strip March 19, 2025. REUTERS/Mahmoud

Khader Junaid clambered onto a donkey cart with his family and their belongings and set off through Gaza's rubble, embarking on all-too-familiar escape to safety following the resumption of heavy Israeli airstrikes.

Repeated displacement has become a way of life for Gaza's 2.3 million Palestinians since a Hamas attack on southern Israel in October, 2023, triggered a war that has killed tens of thousands of people and reduced the enclave to debris and dust.

"We were fine with staying in a tent next to our destroyed home, and now we are forced to go back into the schools," said the Palestinian father-of-six, referring to shelters set up in school buildings.

Continual displacement means ever more hardship for families, Reuters reported.

Junaid's wife Huda urged US President Donald Trump to stop the Gaza war and to work for reconciliation and peace. "We don't want war, we don't want death," she said. "Enough! We are fed up. There are no longer children in Gaza, all of our children are dead, all of our relatives are dead."

Asked about displaced civilians in Gaza, Israeli Defense Forces International Spokesperson Nadav Shoshani described Israel's Hamas militant enemy as "a murderous, a genocidal terror organization that is hiding behind civilians. It is a very difficult war."

Israel is giving up the element of surprise, "one of the most important elements in the battlefield, to make sure those civilians have a chance to get out of harm’s way," he said.

Israel resumed airstrikes on Tuesday, effectively abandoning a ceasefire put in place in January, killing more than 400 Palestinians that day in one of the war's deadliest episodes. A total of at least 510 Palestinians have been killed in the past three days, more than half of them women and children, Khalil Al-Deqran, the spokesperson of the territory's health ministry, told Reuters.

RISING PRICES, FLOODING SEWERS

In January, Junaid's family returned to their destroyed home in al-Salam district in Jabalia refugee camp and erected a tent next to it, but on Wednesday they were on the move once again after shelling intensified.

"It hasn't been even two months since we returned home and now we are displaced again," said Huda.

Huda says the family is exhausted after living in tight spaces in dire conditions. The family headed to a school-turned-shelter in Jabalia, but could not find a place among the crowds, forcing them to set up a tent next to the bathrooms. "I suffered so much to find a place for our tent and it is next to the school's bathrooms where the sewers are flooding," Khader said. Mopping the floor of their makeshift tent, Huda explained how expensive life has become, with raised prices for sugar, tomatoes and many other items.

With crossings closed and supplies dwindling, families like Junaid's are left to rely on food aid from charities, turning to soup kitchens to survive.

"Due to the recent suspension of humanitarian aid into Gaza, stocks of medical supplies have dropped significantly and on top of this, hospital staff are struggling to manage the sharp increase of casualties," said the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) in a statement.

More than 49,000 Palestinians have been killed in the Israeli military campaign on Gaza after October 7, according to Gaza's health authorities. Trump has said the United States will take over Gaza, resettle its Palestinians and redevelop it into an international beach resort, angering its inhabitants and Arab states.

 

 

 



'Tariff Man': Trump's Long History with Trade Wars

US President Donald Trump during an executive order signing in the Oval Office at the White House in Washington, DC, USA, 31 March 2025. EPA/ALEXANDER DRAGO / POOL
US President Donald Trump during an executive order signing in the Oval Office at the White House in Washington, DC, USA, 31 March 2025. EPA/ALEXANDER DRAGO / POOL
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'Tariff Man': Trump's Long History with Trade Wars

US President Donald Trump during an executive order signing in the Oval Office at the White House in Washington, DC, USA, 31 March 2025. EPA/ALEXANDER DRAGO / POOL
US President Donald Trump during an executive order signing in the Oval Office at the White House in Washington, DC, USA, 31 March 2025. EPA/ALEXANDER DRAGO / POOL

Donald Trump loves few things more than talking about his affinity for tariffs, but it's nothing new: he's been saying the same thing for decades.
"To me, the most beautiful word in the dictionary is 'tariff,'" Trump repeatedly said on the campaign trail for the 2024 election, according to AFP.
He has since joked that it is now his fourth favorite word, after love, God and family -- but his commitment to them remains as strong as ever.
The 78-year-old Republican has promised a "Liberation Day" for America on Wednesday when he announces sweeping "reciprocal" tariffs targeting any country that has import levies against US goods.
The sudden trade war has sent leading world economies scrambling -- yet anyone surprised by the onslaught has not been listening to Trump himself.
Other policies have come and gone, especially on hot-button issues such as abortion, but Trump's belief that America is being ripped off by the world has remained one of his core values.
So has his innate conviction that tariffs are the solution, despite arguments by opponents and many economists that US consumers will suffer when importers pass on increased prices.
'Ripping off'
"I am a Tariff Man," Trump declared in a social media post back in 2018 during his first presidential term.
In fact, Trump has been saying as much since the 1980s.
His main target then was Japan, as Trump -- best known in those days as a brash property dealer and tabloid fixture -- discussed getting into politics in an interview with CNN's Larry King.
"A lot of people are tired of watching other countries ripping off the United States," Trump said in 1987, using rhetoric that has changed little in the intervening 38 years.
"Behind our backs, they laugh at us because of our own stupidity."
In a separate interview with chat show host Oprah Winfrey, he raged: "We let Japan come in and dump everything right into our markets."
By the 1990s and early 2000s, China entered his crosshairs, and Beijing remains one of his top tariff targets, along with Canada, Mexico and the European Union.
In his successful 2016 election campaign, Trump stepped up the rhetoric, saying: "We can't continue to allow China to rape our country."
'Very rich'
During his second term, Trump has also started citing a historical precedent going back more than a century -- President William McKinley.
McKinley's passion for both territorial expansion and economic protectionism during his time in office from 1897 to 1901 could have been the model for Trump's "Make America Great Again" policies.
"President McKinley made our country very rich through tariffs and through talent -- he was a natural businessman," Trump said in his inauguration speech in January.
Trump's promises of a "Golden Age" harkens back to the so-called "Gilded Age" that culminated with McKinley's presidency, a time when America's population and economy exploded -- along with the power of oligarchs.
In addition to deploying tariffs, McKinley presided over a period of territorial adventurism for the United States, including the Spanish-American war and the purchases of Guam, Puerto Rico and the Philippines.
Such moves echo Trump's own designs for Greenland, Panama and Canada.
The two also share the unwanted similarity of being struck by an assassin's bullet -- although Trump survived the attempt on his life at an election rally last July, while McKinley was killed by an anarchist in 1901.