What is life like in Gaza now?

Children in Gaza are dying of malnutrition and dehydration, people are shot while queuing for aid, newborn babies are crammed into incubators and a lack of electricity means the day ends at sunset, except for the constant fear of Israeli bombs.

That is the picture painted by aid agencies and reports coming out of the besieged territory that Israel's prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu vowed to turn into a "deserted island" following the Hamas attack on 7 October in which 1,200 people were killed and more than 250 taken hostage.

Yet despite food shortages, a sanitation crisis and blackouts, and beyond the ever-present fear of death, the "mundane drumbeat of life continues", said Al Jazeera.

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'Clinging to life'

Israel's five-month campaign to destroy Hamas in Gaza has resulted in the deaths of more than 30,000 people – including at least 12,300 children – according to the Palestinian Ministry of Health in Ramallah in the occupied West Bank.

Out of a total population of around 2.3 million, an estimated 1.7 million have been displaced from their homes since Israel's military operation began. Thousands of Palestinians continue to flee to the southern town of Rafah, which is already hosting over half of Gaza's population, with most living in makeshift structures, tents or out in the open, according to UNRWA.

The "once-sleepy town along the Egyptian border deemed a 'safe zone'; for displaced civilians to flee to" is now the centre of the "world's gaze" reported Al Jazeera, where Palestinians "cling to life amid the grinding Israeli ground offensive".

Israel insists taking Rafah is crucial to its ground operation against Hamas and freeing the remaining hostages still being held. But UN officials warn an attack on the densely populated area that holds 600,000 children will be "catastrophic".

Each morning brings with it hopes for an internationally brokered ceasefire but many in the Gaza Strip do not think beyond "scraping together breakfast", said the BBC.

"Before the war we used to buy bread, now we make it," 26-year-old journalist Aseel Mousa told the broadcaster.

She is in some sense lucky. In Gaza City last week, more than 100 people were killed when Israeli troops opened fire on a crowd trying to get food from aid convoy trucks, said The Associated Press. The aid was among the first to arrive in more than a month.

Food everywhere in the territory is scarce. Back in December, a group of UN-backed international experts warned that there was a risk of famine in Gaza, with 90% of the population facing acute levels of food insecurity.

"Now, young children have reportedly begun to die due to malnutrition," said The New Humanitarian. The Gaza Health Ministry has said that six children at the Kamal Adwan and al-Shifa hospitals in northern Gaza have died from dehydration and malnutrition this week, with more expected in the coming days.

The lack of clean drinking water and proper sanitation poses a "huge health risk", said Oxfam. Cases of diarrhoea are 40 times higher than this time last year, "although in reality, the number of cases is likely to be significantly higher", said the charity.

Only 12 of Gaza's 36 hospitals are "partially functioning", according to the World Health Organization (WHO), with the rest destroyed by Israel's near constant bombardment of the enclave.

Many "normal" surgical cases have been postponed, meaning "most of these patients either died or they are suffering more and more," hospital manager Dr Haidar Al-Qudra told UN News.

The threat to children is particularly acute, with 77 newborns sharing just 20 incubators at Rafah's overcrowded hospital, according to the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA). In some cases, medical student Nagham Mezied told the BBC, hospitals have "become a refuge for those who have lost everything: their homes, their loved ones, their sense of security".

'Mundane drumbeat of life continues'

The situation in Gaza was not good to begin with, said Khaled Elgindy, director of the programme on Palestine and Palestinian-Israeli affairs at the Middle East Institute, in an interview with Foreign Policy at the start of the war. Even before the 7 October attack and Israel's response, suicide rates had been going up, he said. "It's not only that they're living in miserable conditions, but it's that there's no end in sight."

But five months of war have forced Gazans into "survival mode", said the BBC.

"Before the war at this time, I used to be coming back from work to my home, and then I would relax on my bed and talk to my mum about my day," Mousa told the BBC. "Now, it is not just boredom – it's anxiety, tension all the time."

With intermittent internet and power blackouts – some enforced, some a consequence of the constant Israeli bombardment – the search for a signal becomes a daily struggle, exacerbating the sense of isolation many Gazans feel from each other and the rest of the world.

Mezied dreams of having a hot shower "to release the fatigue of the day" but there is no gas and no water. Because of the lack of internet and electricity "the day in Gaza now ends early", she said. "We have nothing to do. We try to sleep early and have some rest in case the night brings bombs and terror."

Amazingly, at the current epicentre of the fight in Rafah, the "mundane drumbeat of life continues in some places", Al Jazeera said. "A boy gets a haircut. A girl dons an oversized sheer pink floral dress. Women and a child avoid a large puddle near a mass of tents. And in a surreal snapshot of joy, children spin around on a makeshift, manually operated Ferris wheel, turning and turning as the war – now in its fifth month – rolls on."