Crouched inside her makeshift tent at a camp in Rafah, Samah El-Nazli fidgets as she recalls what her living conditions have been like since the war began. The mother of four is among millions of Gazans struggling to access food, water and sanitation in the overcrowded camp after losing their own homes in the strip.
“There’s no way to keep clean, there’s no way to be comfortable — we’re living a completely destroyed life,” she said.
Many women and girls living in the strip have opted to start taking birth control as a way to stop their periods as the conflict nears its eighth month.
El-Nazli, 34, said she tried everything to manage her cycle — from adult diapers to dirty cloth — before seeking out medication to stop her period altogether.
“None of these things are good,” she said in an interview while she reorganized the pots and pans lining the nylon walls of her tent.
The IDF ‘maintains’ a list of banned “dual use” items that while definitely helpful to civilians, if it can potentially-maybe-kinda be of any use to a militant? Banned.
The list is absurd and goes beyond understandable items like binoculars or bubble levels, and bans dumb things like scissors, tourniquets, or tampons. If some witless IDF inspector can think of a potential use, it’s banned. The whole truck gets turned around.
They rejected an aid shipment at least once because it was on the wrong size pallet.