DaysofPal – Winter has descended on Gaza like a second assault, cold, relentless, and merciless to a population already crushed by two years of bombardment and mass displacement.
For two days, rain has hammered the Strip. In the tent camps where hundreds of thousands of Palestinians are trying to survive, everything is leaking. Water pours through torn canvas and frayed plastic sheets, flooding the ground beneath families who have nowhere else to go. Many camps are situated in low-lying areas, which turn them into basins that collect runoff from surrounding streets. Entire sections are now submerged.
Inside bombed-out buildings, those gutted shells people now call “shelter,” roofs drip constantly. Walls crumble. Each downpour raises the fear that the weakened structures will finally give way, burying the people inside.
Along the coast, tents pitched in desperation face the violent winter tides that can sweep away what little protection families have left.
And in all of this, there are no blankets. No fuel. No proper materials are available to reinforce the shelter against the wind and rain. These tents were never built to survive storms. Most were never meant to be lived in for months, let alone years.
Cold winds and driving rain are turning already brutal living conditions into something close to unendurable. Yet Israel continues to block the entry of tents, winter clothing, plastic sheeting, and other critical supplies into the Gaza Strip, deepening what aid agencies describe as a preventable humanitarian nightmare.
On Saturday, Palestinians tried to carve trenches around their tents, using their bare hands, broken tools, or scraps of metal to keep the floodwaters at bay. Others retreated into shattered buildings, even ones visibly at risk of collapse, because staying outside meant freezing in the storm.
Humanitarian agencies have spent weeks issuing the same warning: Gaza’s displaced population is not equipped to survive winter. After two years of relentless attacks, more than 198,000 structures across the Strip have been damaged or destroyed, according to the United Nations.
Entire neighborhoods are gone. Families who fled once have fled again and again, some more than a dozen times, until all that remains are makeshift shelters held together by rope, nails, and hope.
Despite a ceasefire agreement announced on October 10, Israel has kept tight restrictions on the flow of aid, leaving civilians exposed to bitter cold and dangerous storms. Aid groups estimate that roughly 260,000 Palestinian families, nearly 1.5 million people, are now at extreme risk as temperatures drop.
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