A Palestinian boy sits in the courtyard of a United Nations school in Jabaliya, where hundreds of Palestinians families have taken shelter from intense Israeli bombardment, living in poorly equipped classrooms without electricity or running water. (Wissam Nassar, Maan Images)

Mohammad Rujailah, a 24-year-old freelance translator, journalist and human rights campaigner from Khan Younis, has been volunteering with a team of emergency medics since the beginning of Israel's offensive in the Gaza Strip, which began on December 27. He currently lives in Gaza City.

Gaza City/Jabiliya

We woke up this morning in order to travel to the northern part of the Gaza Strip, where we were to offer emergency medical assistance to families who had fled their homes and taken shelter in a United Nations school in the Jabaliya refugee camp.

The streets around my apartment, usually full of people, have been completely empty for over two weeks. Shops are closed and people are afraid to go out onto the streets.

Travel within the Gaza Strip is nearly impossible. Taxis are not operating, as fuel supplies have dried up and the ongoing attacks have scared nearly everyone - including drivers who earn their living transporting passengers across the city or to different parts of the Gaza Strip - off the streets. No one is going anywhere.

Luckily, Mahmoud, an ambulance driver working with a team of emergency medics that I and several international humanitarian volunteers with the Free Gaza Movement are assisting during the crisis, phoned to let us know that he would pick us up near my apartment.

We try to spend as little time as possible standing on the streets or traveling by foot. One of the aid workers I travel with frequently is shooting a documentary film about the situation in Gaza, and we fear that the equipment he carries could lead us to be targeted by an Israeli drone or war plane.

Mahmoud picked us up in his ambulance, and we traveled north to Jabaliya, where we visited a UNRWA school there that has been turned into a shelter for families who have fled areas under intense bombardment.

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The conditions in the school were shocking. There is no electricity or running water, and bathroom facilities are limited to a few toilets. Families have crowded into the small classrooms, with between ten and fifteen people in each room.

I met an extended family of 45 people who had fled their home in nearby Beit Lahiya. The mother, Um-Said, told me that she had been terrified that the Israelis would demolish her home and thus convinced her entire extended family to take refuge in the United Nations school.

But since Israel attacked a United Nations school housing civilian refugees in Jabaliya on Jan 6 and numerous other civilian targets - including homes, businesses, and mosques - Palestinians have begun to feel that nowhere is safe in Gaza anymore.

Um-Said, who had heard the news of the attack on the nearby Al-Fakhura school, was hysterical when I spoke to her. Grabbing my arm, she begged for reassurance. "Is this place safe?" she asked me again and again. "I am afraid for my family. Is there any place left for us to go?"

My heart sunk, as I had no reply to offer her. Instead, I tried to distract her by asking about her family, but I soon realized that the fear of having her family taken out in an Israel attack was not the only of Um-Said's worries - her son lay in the corner of the room, his leg having been recently amputated.

Samir, age 24, was also diabetic, she told me, and the injury had made his condition worse. Insulin had been hard to come by even before Israel launched its recent attacks, and Samir had been taking a dose much smaller than what doctors had told him was necessary. But for the past two weeks, Um-Said said, finding it had been nearly impossible. She had managed to obtain one vial for Samir, but was afraid that because she was unable to keep it refrigerated due to the lack of electricity, it may have gone bad.

Another one of her children, Laila, was well into her first pregnancy, and was distraught when the family was forced to leave their home in Beit Lahiya and flee to the overcrowded UN facility. "It's her first child," Um-Said told me. "If she loses it from the stress and trauma, it will destroy her."

I finally left Um-Said, after assuring her that I would do my best to try and obtain insulin for her son and another medication for her ailing husband.

Outside, I found several of Um-Said's grandchildren playing in the yard. "They try to distract themselves, to forget what's going on," a man smoking a cigarette nearby told me. "But it's a temporary escape. The kids here are traumatized. At night, everyone is terrified."

I spoke to one of Um-Said's granddaughters, Samah. Around seven or eight years old, she told me that at first she was afraid, but now the conflict had become part of her daily reality - two of her friends from Beit Lahiya had been killed in an Israeli missile strike on the third day of Israel's air assault. "I don't mind to die, really," she told me. "There is no life here."

The names of persons mentioned in this testimony have been changed upon their request.

The author can be reached at mrigilah@yahoo.com.