{"id":391917,"date":"2025-11-20T09:30:16","date_gmt":"2025-11-20T09:30:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/391917\/"},"modified":"2025-11-20T09:30:16","modified_gmt":"2025-11-20T09:30:16","slug":"look-at-us-with-mercy-displaced-palestinians-dread-onset-of-harsh-winter-gaza","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/391917\/","title":{"rendered":"\u2018Look at us with mercy\u2019: displaced Palestinians dread onset of harsh winter | Gaza"},"content":{"rendered":"

Everyone knew what was coming. But there was little the inhabitants of the tent cities that crowd the shore of southern Gaza<\/a> could do as the storm approached. Sabah al-Breem, 62, was sitting with one of her daughters and several grandchildren in their current home \u2013 a makeshift construction of tarpaulins and salvaged wood \u2013 when the wind and the driving rain broke across Gaza last week.<\/p>\n

\u201cEverything collapsed \u2026 We repaired our shelter but in the night it fell down again under the heavy rain. All our belongings were soaked. The day the winds blew was a black day for us,\u201d said Breem, originally from Khan Younis but displaced multiple times since the start of the war in October 2023.<\/p>\n

This week the half million or so Palestinians living in al-Mawasi, a cramped coastal zone in southern Gaza, are bracing for a grim winter. For many it will be the third that they have faced after being displaced during the conflict.<\/p>\n

Last week\u2019s storm revealed how more than 2 million Palestinians in Gaza, though they survived the two-year war, still face humanitarian crisis.<\/p>\n

Shelter is the most pressing need, aid agencies say. Most homes in Gaza have been destroyed or rendered uninhabitable by successive Israeli offensives, or lie east of the new \u201cyellow line\u201d that divides the territory<\/a> into a zone under Israeli military control and one under de facto Hamas authority.<\/p>\n

A storm hit displacement camps in Deir al-Balah, in central Gaza. Photograph: Amjed Tantesh\/The Guardian<\/p>\n

There is nowhere for the displaced to go. In the aftermath of the storm, barefoot children splashed in muddy puddles as women made tea outside under dark clouds. Some tried to shelter in destroyed buildings, even those at risk of collapse, with gaping holes covered by pieces of plastic.<\/p>\n

Food comes a close second in terms of priorities for those in al-Mawasi. Donald Trump\u2019s 20-point ceasefire deal called for \u201cfull aid\u201d to be sent into Gaza, but though more has been reaching the devastated territory, residents and humanitarian officials say quantities are grossly insufficient.<\/p>\n

\u201cIs it better? Yes \u2026 in the sense that people aren\u2019t starving any more. Is it enough? Absolutely not. We have massive stockpiles of tents and tarpaulins and we can\u2019t get them in. A lot is still waiting to clear all the hurdles the Israelis are still putting in our way \u2026 We could be handing out 10,000 tents a day,\u201d said a senior official of a major international NGO last week.<\/p>\n

Israel has not yet allowed passage through the entry point into Gaza from Egypt at Rafah, though some other smaller crossings from Israel have been reopened. The majority of supplies entering the territory are trucked in by private commercial operators or donors, such as major Gulf countries, with officials from major United Nations agencies saying<\/a> they still face daunting and opaque bureaucratic processes that slow or stop their distributions. Aid officials say many critical items, such as tent poles, are not permitted by Israel to enter Gaza because they are designated as potentially having a military use.<\/p>\n

COGAT, the Israeli Ministry of Defence agency that administers entry to Gaza, denies this and said that over the last few months it had facilitated the distribution of close to 140,000 tarpaulins in Gaza, though 19,000 tents brought by NGOs were designed only for summer conditions. The agency is supposed to be working closely with a new US-run centre to facilitate the supply of aid into Gaza, though few details have emerged of how this is working in practice.<\/p>\n

Prices in Gaza fluctuate wildly but those who have funds can buy a tent in markets for about $800. Few in al-Mawasi have any cash at all after two years of war and most Palestinians in the territory still cannot afford to buy food, medicine or scarce cooking gas. Community kitchens have stepped up operations, but cannot satisfy the acute need.<\/p>\n

Maher Abu Jerad, 29, from Beit Lahiya in the northern Gaza Strip, said his family of four was living mainly on canned beans and peas. \u201cSometimes we receive one meal from the public kitchen every three days \u2013 usually lentils or rice. The food in the market remains completely unaffordable. Water is also a struggle. We have to bring it from a long distance, and it does not last the whole day. We only have three containers that we fill for daily use,\u201d said Abu Jerad, a painter before the war.<\/p>\n

All in Gaza know last week\u2019s storm was the first of many and temperatures will plummet in coming weeks. \u201cWith no basic infrastructure or proper drainage in the camps, rainwater is collecting around the tents. Overcrowding and the limited access to clean water are also making the sanitation situation much worse,\u201d said Mohammed Madhoun, a community healthcare worker at a clinic run by Medical Aid for Palestinians in Deir al-Balah in central Gaza.<\/p>\n

The storm left tents scattered across street and beaches where surges of seawater engulfed many. \u201cThe sound of the waves prevents us from sleeping. We barely sleep an hour or less, and the seawater reaches the tents when the waves crash,\u201d said Breem. \u201cWe lack all winter essentials: no blankets, no rugs, no bedding. Diseases have spread among us: colds, coughs, aches \u2026 and this is just at the start of winter.\u201d<\/p>\n

The first stage of the ceasefire agreement, which called for an Israeli partial withdrawal and the return of hostages held by Hamas, is close to completion. The next stage, which received a boost following the endorsement<\/a> of Trump\u2019s plan by the UN security council on Monday, calls for the creation of a committee of Palestinian technocrats to run Gaza under the ultimate authority of the president and the deployment of an international stabilisation force. A major unanswered question is how, or if, Hamas will be disarmed.<\/p>\n

The conflict was triggered in October 2023 when Hamas-led militants attacked southern Israel, killing about 1,200 people, mostly civilians, and abducting 251. The Islamist organisation still holds the remains of three hostages. Israel\u2019s military campaign in Gaza has killed 69,100 Palestinians, mostly civilians, and reduced much of the territory to rubble.<\/p>\n

Naama Arafat, who now lives on the shore in al-Mawasi, said she remembered a \u201cbeautiful life\u201d before the war in her family\u2019s \u201csmall, simple, warm house\u201d east of Khan Younis.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe wore our warm clothes, and mattresses and blankets were plentiful \u2026 Now, we cannot even light a fire to cook food because of the strong winds and the lack of wood and supplies,\u201d Arafat, 53, said. \u201cI pray to God that all aspects of our lives will be eased and we can live in better conditions. I say a message to the world: to look at us with mercy and offer us help, for we have entered a very harsh winter season.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Everyone knew what was coming. But there was little the inhabitants of the tent cities that crowd the…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":391918,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[99,50],"class_list":{"0":"post-391917","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-news","8":"tag-israel","9":"tag-news"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/115581329509751318","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/391917","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=391917"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/391917\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/391918"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=391917"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=391917"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=391917"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}