Deir el-Balah, Gaza Strip – Every morning, Abdel Karim Salman begins his routine by heading out carrying his own phone and his wife’s phone, both completely drained of charge. He walks to a nearby charging point to plug them in and recharge them again.Throughout the night, Abdel Karim relies entirely on the torches from the phones to light the inside of the tent he lives in with his family in central Gaza’s Deir el-Balah.Recommended Stories list of 3 itemsend of listAbdel Karim, 28, a former civil engineer at the Beit Lahiya municipality in northern Gaza, was displaced to Deir el-Balah a year and a half ago with his wife and two children, along with about 30 members of his extended family.His family home was completely destroyed on October 9, 2023, in the first few days of Israel’s genocidal war on Gaza.Abdel Karim and his family have been on a difficult journey of displacement since then, with little in the way of normality, and in particular, a regular source of electricity for a bulb in his tent.So he looks for alternatives to light up the structure, namely the phones, despite the rapid battery drain caused by keeping the torch function on.“I charge my phone and my wife’s phone, and we use them for lighting at night, especially since my children are under five years old and they get scared if they wake up in the dark,” …
