Ahmed AlmallahiWashington DC — Roba, a university graduate from Palestine’s Gaza, says she lives "in a reality that feels like the unknown."
She studied English and French literature at Al-Azhar University, but today her struggle is not about job interviews.
It is about finding one meal a day.
"My memories have been erased," she says.
"I lost my home, I lost many friends, and the city no longer looks like it did. Life has died. There is no present and there is no future."
Her account, along with testimony from the medical professionals at Gaza’s largest hospital complex al-Shifa Hospital, matches a deteriorating picture from UN agencies that say civilian lifelines in Gaza City are collapsing amid intensified Israeli military offensives.
The humanitarian warnings include surging displacement, acute malnutrition, and a health system operating far beyond capacity, with critical supplies repeatedly blocked or delayed by access restrictions, according to the UN.
TRT World spoke to people in Gaza over WhatsApp and email.
'No options left but to wait'
Roba says she has been out of work since the first weeks of the war and that months of searching have produced no opportunities under current conditions.
She has not evacuated because she wants to stay, she stresses, but because there are no options.
"The feeling now is that the next displacement could be the last," she says, explaining that she cannot afford a tent, which she says costs between one thousand and one thousand five hundred dollars, and that there is simply no space left "to fit people" in central and southern Gaza.
Water, food and basic sanitation are scarce in those areas too, she adds, mirroring conditions in the north.
For now, she waits — "until the last moment," she says — in a city that no longer has a shape she recognises.
Roba’s account aligns with the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), which reported that eleven UNRWA premises used as emergency shelters for approximately 11,000 people in Gaza City were damaged within five days, amid a wider pattern of repeated displacement across the enclave.
Aid partners say they are serving several hundred thousand hot meals daily through community kitchens, but also warn this falls far short of needs as access routes narrow and inspection rules shift, delaying deliveries.
Humanitarian teams continue to screen children for malnutrition and start treatment where possible, yet malnutrition-related deaths have been recorded and dedicated treatment sites have themselves come under evacuation orders, according to the UN.
'There is no future for my children'
In northern Gaza, Abdelkader Jamal, a now-unemployed teacher, is trying to feed his two sons — Yahya, 4, and Omar, 3 — while calculating the risks and costs of yet another move.
"There is no future for my children," he says.
"There are no schools, no kindergartens."
What education exists now, he explains, is small volunteer initiatives by former teachers or university graduates — "not supported by the Ministry of Education, and not in a healthy or appropriate environment for children”.
His daily crisis is food and the next displacement: "All the components of life are gone in northern Gaza right now."
He says that when he tries to withdraw cash from his bank account, commissions to obtain liquidity can exceed 40 percent.
Even when cash is in hand, the bills are often so worn that they complicate simple purchases.
Without a stable income, he searches for cooked meals or basic food parcels to keep his children fed.
Abdelkader has remained in the north, he says, because there are no safe areas, north or south, and because transport costs have soared.
He estimates moving his belongings from the north to the south would now cost between $1,000 and $2,000, money he does not have.
He does not own a tent; buying one, he says, would cost around $1,000.
"If I stay, what will happen to me, my wife and my children?" he asks, pointing to sharply rising food prices and the inability of many families to purchase essentials.
He also describes the psychological toll of diplomatic setbacks.
Referring to an Islamic-Arab summit in Doha after Israeli strikes reportedly targeted members of Hamas’s political leadership in Qatar, Abdelkader says he felt disappointed by the outcome.
He had hoped the meeting would produce concrete steps toward halting the Israeli genocide and the large-scale civilian suffering.
"Now," he says, "I am not thinking of displacement because of the difficulties we mentioned. Death is better than displacement."
'Only four of twenty-two operating theatres are running'
Inside Gaza’s shattered health system, the picture is equally stark.
Dr Khaled, a physician at al-Shifa Hospital in Gaza City, describes "what remains" of the hospital after repeated strikes and last year’s ground raid by Israeli forces.
The core problems, he says, are capacity and logistics: too few staff, too few beds, and too little of everything from fuel to advanced imaging.
By his estimate, hospital bed occupancy is more than 300 percent, a figure that he says is consistent with data published by Gaza’s Ministry of Health.
Multiple departments have shut completely, he says, including the cardiac catheterisation unit.
"There are not enough operating theatres," he adds.
"At al-Shifa, only four of twenty-two operating rooms are currently functioning."
There is no CT or MRI available inside the complex, he says, and essential diagnostic and surgical equipment is either missing, damaged or unusable due to power and maintenance constraints.
Beyond the hospital’s walls, the broader context compounds the crisis: electricity cuts, water shortages, food insecurity and the collapse of municipal services all drive a surge in preventable illness and trauma that the health system cannot absorb.
In a separate interview with TRT Arabi, Dr Mohammed Abu Salmiya, director of the al-Shifa Hospital Medical Complex, called the facility "the beating heart" of Gaza’s health system — a heart that has been struggling for months to restart under bombardment and siege.
He said teams have been repairing sections of the complex for about six months, reopening parts of the emergency department, inpatient wards, intensive care and dialysis.
Even so, he said, the load is overwhelming.
"Absorptive capacity exceeds three 300 percent," he noted, adding that the hospital loses patients because there are not enough operating rooms and because drug stocks and basic disposables are running out.
Abu Salmiya said al-Shifa Hospital once had twenty-two operating theatres; now, like Dr Khaled, he counts four in service.
The cardiac catheterisation unit is down, he said.
The largest neonatal intensive care unit in Palestine — previously serving the occupied West Bank and Gaza — is out of service entirely, with newborns and premature babies dying because incubators are unavailable in Gaza City.
Dialysis capacity is now less than half of what it was, he added, with roughly 40 percent of kidney failure patients lost.
Those frontline accounts mirror warnings from the World Health Organization that public health conditions in Gaza are "catastrophic."
WHO officials say fewer than half of hospitals and under 38 percent of primary care centres are even partially functional, with bed occupancy at major facilities ranging from nearly double to more than triple their nominal capacity.
Stocks of essential medicines and basic consumables are depleted, and repeated displacement orders, insecurity and access denials impede both treatment and supply chains.
A war measured in blocked routes and empty wards
UN agencies say that while humanitarian partners continue to bring in wheat flour, food parcels and some medical supplies, "opportunities to support starving people are being systematically blocked."
One direct crossing to the north has been shut at times, according to OCHA, while inspection rules vary by route, creating unpredictability and delays for items that have already been procured.
Even basic food items can be labelled "luxuries" and held back, aid officials say.
Inside Gaza, planned humanitarian missions are often denied, impeded or cancelled due to insecurity, even as aid groups manage to deliver fuel or move limited cargo when conditions allow.
The UN has also condemned recent escalations in Gaza City that reportedly killed and injured scores of people, reiterating calls for the protection of civilians and humanitarian staff, and for respect for international law.
With roads damaged across most of the enclave and clinics suspending services under pressure of displacement orders, aid groups have urged unimpeded access "at scale" through multiple crossings into and within Gaza, including the north.
Meanwhile, rights investigators appointed by the UN Human Rights Council have alleged that Israel’s atrocities in Gaza meet the legal definition of genocide, citing killings, serious harm, conditions of life calculated to bring about destruction, and measures intended to prevent births.
Israeli officials reject the findings, calling them biased and unsubstantiated.
Whatever the legal framing, the practical outcome Roba and Abdelkader describe is the same: a daily contest for food, water, medicine and shelter, with fewer places to go and fewer services left when they get there.
'We wait for the last moment'
Roba says she no longer speaks in terms of plans.
Her vocabulary is about coping.
She lists numbers that add up to immobility: the price of a tent in dollars, the absence of space in the south, the fact that conditions there — water, food, sanitation — are also breaking down.
She talks about waiting "for the last moment," about a city where landmarks have been erased and friends are gone.
Abdelkader frames his choices in a similar arithmetic: the cost of transport measured in thousands of dollars; the surcharge to access his own money measured in double-digit shares; the price of a tent he does not have; the risk of moving his children with no safe destination ahead.
In between these calculations, he searches for meals and tries to keep the boys’ lives stitched together with improvised lessons and the routines that remain.
Doctors at al-Shifa Hospital, for their part, count operating rooms — four where there used to be twenty-two — and tally losses that cannot be undone by triage or commitment alone.
They describe patients who die while waiting for theatre space, wards that cannot reopen, and newborns who will not survive because neonatal care no longer exists where it is needed.
Taken together, these testimonies sketch a Gaza where the terms of survival have narrowed to the point of vanishing.
The UN calls for access, protection and law.
Residents like Roba and Abdelkader count the hours and the currency of their choices — and wait for an opening that has not yet come.
