GAZA CITY — Aid agencies are warning of a humanitarian catastrophe in Gaza after the first heavy winter rains flooded makeshift tents and temporary shelters, leaving families ankle‑deep in sewage‑tainted water and raising fears of disease and death. More than a quarter of a million Palestinian families, displaced by two years of war, are in urgent need of shelter, according to the Norwegian Refugee Council.
“We are going to lose lives this winter. Children, families will perish,” said Jan Egeland, the council’s secretary general, who described the situation as a “bureaucratic, military, politicised quagmire” that has blocked vital supplies.
The flooding has underscored the fragility of Gaza’s improvised shelters. Fatima Hamdona, a mother in Gaza City, wept as she showed a journalist the puddles inside her tent. “My children are already sick. We don’t have food — the flour got all wet. We’re people who’ve been destroyed. Where do we go?” she said. Similar scenes played out in Khan Younis, where families tried to dry mattresses and blankets ruined by the storm.
A recent United Nations report found that more than 80 percent of Gaza’s buildings have been destroyed, including 92 percent in Gaza City. Aid groups say about 1.5 million people are without adequate shelter. Since the U.S.‑brokered ceasefire took effect in October, only 19,000 tents have entered Gaza, far short of the 260,000 families in need. Tens of thousands of pallets of aid remain stuck in Egypt, Jordan and Israel.
Israel’s defense body, Cogat, said it has coordinated the entry of nearly 190,000 tents and tarpaulins in recent months and insisted that hundreds of trucks carrying food, fuel, medicine and shelter supplies are entering daily. It urged international organizations to coordinate more winter aid through the new U.S.‑led Civil‑Military Coordination Center in southern Israel.
But aid groups say restrictions, including Israel’s classification of tent poles as “dual‑use” items with potential military applications, have slowed deliveries. They also object to new registration rules requiring lists of Palestinian staff, which they argue violate donor countries’ data protection laws.
Meanwhile, tents already inside Gaza are being stolen and sold on the black market, residents told the BBC. Prices have dropped from more than 2,700 Dollars before the ceasefire to about 900 Dollars, but many families still cannot afford them. “Until this moment, people are re‑erecting broken tents because they don’t have any alternative,” said Alaa al‑Dirghali in Khan Younis.
For families like Rami Deif Allah’s, the struggle is relentless. Displaced from Beit Hanoun, he said his family has evacuated 11 times. Even a waterproof tent provided by relatives could not withstand the storm. “The water flooded us from above and below,” he said. “We pray for this war to be fully over, and for everyone to return to their homes. Even if we don’t find our houses standing, with our sweat and blood we will rebuild.”
With a donor conference on Gaza reconstruction expected soon in Cairo, aid groups warn that long‑term plans will mean little if basic shelter supplies are not allowed in immediately. “It would not be a good thing if all these nations meet to discuss reconstruction while Palestinians die before their homes can be rebuilt,” Egeland said.
