KHAN YOUNIS, Gaza Strip – Winter is approaching the Gaza Strip and lots of the nearly two million Palestinians displaced by the devastating 14-month war with Israel are struggling to shelter from wind, cold and rain.
There is a scarcity of blankets and warm clothing, there’s little wood for fires and the tents and patched tarpaulins through which the families live have grow to be increasingly worn out after months of intensive use, helpers and residents report.
Shadia Aiyada, who was displaced from the southern city of Rafah to the coastal Muwasi region, has only a blanket and a hot water bottle to maintain her eight children from shivering of their fragile tent.
“We get scared every time we hear from the weather forecast that there will be rainy and windy days because our tents will be lifted by the wind. We fear that strong winds may one day destroy our tents while we are indoors,” she said.
Since temperatures can drop into the 40s (mid to high single digits Celsius) at night, Aiyada fears her children will get sick without warm clothing.
When they fled their home, her children only had their summer clothes, she said. They were forced to borrow from relatives and friends to maintain warm.
The United Nations warns that individuals living in precarious shelters may not survive the winter. At least 945,000 people need winter equipment that has grow to be prohibitively expensive in Gaza, the United Nations said in an update on Tuesday. The United Nations also fears that infectious diseases, which surged last winter, will rise again amid rising malnutrition.
The U.N. agency for Palestinian refugees, generally known as UNRWA, has been planning for Gaza's winter all yr long, however the aid it has been in a position to bring to the world is “far from enough for the people,” said Louise Wateridge, an agency spokesperson.
UNRWA distributed 6,000 tents in northern Gaza over the past 4 weeks, but was unable to maneuver them to other parts of Gaza, including areas where there was fighting. About 22,000 tents have been stuck in Jordan for the reason that summer and 600,000 blankets and 33 truckloads of mattresses are in Egypt since the agency has no Israeli approval or a protected method to get them to Gaza and since it has needed to prioritize urgently needed food aid, said Wateridge.
Many of the mattresses and blankets have since been looted or destroyed by weather and rodents, she said.
The International Rescue Committee is having difficulty importing winter clothing for youngsters due to “a lot of approvals that need to be obtained from relevant authorities,” said Dionne Wong, the organization's deputy program director for the occupied Palestinian territories.
“The ability of Palestinians to prepare for winter is fundamentally very limited,” Wong said.
The Israeli government agency accountable for coordinating aid deliveries to Gaza said in an announcement that Israel has been working with international organizations for months to arrange Gaza for winter, including facilitating the delivery of heaters, warm clothing, tents and Blankets in the world.
According to the Gaza Ministry of Health, greater than 45,000 Palestinians have been killed within the Gaza war. The ministry's count doesn’t distinguish between civilians and combatants, but says greater than half of the fatalities were women and youngsters. The Israeli military says it has killed greater than 17,000 militants without providing evidence.
The war was sparked by Hamas' attack on southern Israel in October 2023, through which the militant group killed 1,200 people and took 250 hostages in Gaza.
Negotiators say Israel and Hamas are slowly moving toward a ceasefire agreement that will include a rise in aid deliveries to the world.
Currently, winter clothing on the market in Gaza markets is way too expensive for most individuals to afford, residents and aid employees said.
Reda Abu Zarada, 50, who was displaced from the northern Gaza Strip along with her family, said the adults sleep with the youngsters of their arms to maintain them warm of their tent.
On Thursday evening, she battled knee pain exacerbated by the cold weather to roast zucchini over a hearth constituted of scraps of paper and cardboard outside her tent. She hoped the small meal would warm the youngsters before bed.
Omar Shabet, who was displaced from Gaza City and lives together with his three children, feared that lighting a hearth outside his tent would make his family a goal for Israeli warplanes.
“We go into our tents after sunset and don’t go out because it is very cold and it gets even colder at midnight,” he said. “My 7-year-old daughter almost cries at night because she is so cold.”
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