On a Thursday that began like most others in what remains of Gaza City, three men were killed in separate Israeli air strikes, their bodies carried to Al-Shifa Hospital by relatives and paramedics navigating streets still lined with rubble. A fourth person died further south when a strike hit a tent — the kind of flimsy, makeshift shelter that now serves as home for hundreds of thousands of Palestinians who have been displaced, in some cases multiple times, since the conflict escalated. Israel's military said the strikes were directed at Hamas militants. Palestinian health officials confirmed the deaths.

Several other people were wounded. The attacks are the latest instance of violence that has punctuated what many civilians had hoped might be a period of reduced hostilities. Mohammad Hamad, a displaced resident of Gaza City, spoke on 27 August of an atmosphere in which parents no longer let their children play outside, and in which the durability of any ceasefire arrangement remained deeply uncertain. His words captured a broader mood: relief and dread coexisting in the same overcrowded shelter.

Beyond the immediate threat of strikes, the humanitarian conditions across Gaza's displacement sites have deteriorated in ways that are harder to photograph but no less damaging. Footage from Khan Younis, recorded in August, showed families coping with infestations of rats, scorpions and other pests in areas where sanitation infrastructure has been destroyed. The United Nations reported in April that such infestations were being observed at roughly 80 per cent of all displacement sites — a figure that points to a public-health emergency layered on top of a military one.