In November 2023, displaced families sheltering at a school in Rafah, southern Gaza, waited for free drinking water delivered by truck. With piped and bottled water unavailable as dependable sources, the line of containers depended on the truck’s arrival and limited load. A school had become a shelter, and its grounds a distribution point for each household’s water.
This waiting should not be described as an orderly return to normality. It was produced by forced displacement and collapsed infrastructure; free distribution did not mean adequate supply. Taking turns at one tanker was a mechanism for sustaining the minimum requirements of life inside the shelter.