Shelters plea for Gazans as winter rains raise fears of more disease and death

Aid agencies renewed calls for Israel to allow more tents and urgently needed supplies into Gaza after the first heavy winter rains, saying more than a quarter of a million families needed urgent help with shelter.

“We will lose our lives this winter. Children and families will perish,” says Jan Egeland, Secretary General of the Norwegian Refugee Council (NRC).

“It is so frustrating, in fact, that we have lost so many important weeks since the passage of the Trump peace plan, which said humanitarian aid would flow and Palestinians would not continue to suffer needlessly.”

Most Gazans now live in tents, with the majority of the population displaced by two years of devastating war; Most of them are makeshift.

Cleanup is underway after widespread flooding due to the winter storm that started Friday.

It is feared that diseases will spread due to rainwater mixing with sewage water.

“My children are already sick and look what happened to our tent,” Fatima Hamdona, crying in the rain at the weekend, told a BBC freelance reporter as she showed an ankle-deep puddle in her temporary home in Gaza.

“We have no food, our flour is wet. We are ruined people. Where do we go? There is no shelter we can go to anymore.”

The story was the same in the southern city of Khan Younis.

“Our clothes, beds and blankets were flooded,” said Nihad Shabat, who was trying to dry his belongings there on Monday.

His family sleeps in a shelter of sheets and blankets.

“We’re worried it will flood again. We can’t afford to buy a tent.”

Across Gaza in a recent UN report More than 80 percent of buildings were destroyed, and 92 percent of buildings in Gaza City were destroyed..

According to the NRC, which has long led the Shelter Cluster in Gaza, which consists of approximately 20 non-governmental organizations (NGOs), approximately 260,000 Palestinian families, or approximately 1.5 million people, are in need of emergency shelter assistance, lacking the basic needs to survive the winter.

NGOs say they have only been able to bring about 19,000 tents into Gaza since the US-brokered Israel-Hamas ceasefire came into force on October 10.

They say 44,000 pallets of relief goods, which include non-food items including tents and bedding, have been prevented from entering. Purchased supplies are currently stuck in Egypt, Jordan and Israel.

Jan Egeland blames the robbery on a “bureaucratic, military, politicized quagmire” that is “contrary to all human principles.”

In March, Israel introduced a new registration process for aid groups working in Gaza, citing security reasons. They must provide a list of local Palestinian personnel.

But aid groups say data protection laws in donor countries prevent the release of such information.

Many items, including tent poles, are classified as “dual-use” by Israel; This means that they have both military and civilian purposes, and their entry is prohibited or severely restricted.

The BBC asked Cogat, the Israeli defense agency that controls border crossings, for details on the number of tents imported, but it has not yet responded.

He posted on X on Sunday: “Over the last few months, for winter preparation and rain protection purposes, COGAT has coordinated with the international community and provided close to 140,000 tarpaulins directly to residents of the Gaza Strip.”

“We call on international organizations to coordinate more tents, tarpaulins and other winter humanitarian interventions.”

He says he is working with the new US-led Civil-Military Coordination Center (CMCC), established in southern Israel, and other international partners to plan “a food and drink humanitarian response for next winter.”

International aid groups hope the CMCC, which will oversee implementation of President Trump’s 20-point Gaza peace plan, will help ease restrictions on its work.

With a foreign donor conference on rebuilding Palestinian territory expected to be held in Egypt soon, they say basic housing supplies should be allowed in while long-term plans are developed.

“It would not be a good thing for all these nations to meet in Cairo to discuss long-term reconstruction for Palestinians in dire need if the high-rises die before they are rebuilt,” says Mr. Egeland, who was previously the UN’s Emergency Relief Coordinator.

“They need a tent today, not the promise of a beachfront development in five years.”

Palestinians told the BBC that many tents brought by international organizations and Gulf donors were stolen and found on the black market in Gaza.

They say prices have fallen to around $900-$1,000, from around $2,700 (€2,330; £2,050) before the ceasefire, with a small increase in supply.

There are demands for international assistance to distribute more shelters more fairly.

“I hope everyone will join us to end this crisis we are experiencing,” says Alaa al-Dirghali of Khan Younis. “The tents withstood two years of sun and two years of rain, and they couldn’t withstand this downpour.”

“Until now, people are re-erecting these broken tents because they have no other choice. I pray to God that those responsible for distributing the tents will give them to those who really need them. They are stolen and sold to people at very high prices.”

Rami Deif Allah, displaced from Beit Hanoun, was drying soaked beds in the weak sunlight with his elderly mother and children in Gaza City.

He said a relative gave him a waterproof tent, but it was still flooded.

“We evacuated about 11 times and took shelter in these modest tents as there was no safe place for us, but it was all in vain. They could not protect us when the rain came,” he said. “The water flooded us from above and below.”

Like all Gazans, Rami longs for a permanent home.

“We pray for this war to end completely and for everyone to return home,” he continued. “Even if we cannot find our houses standing, we will rebuild them with our sweat and blood. This situation of living on the streets is unbearable.”