Shelters pray for Gazans as winter rains raise fears of more illness, deaths

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

“We will lose lives this winter. Children and families will perish,” said Jan Egeland, secretary-general of the Norwegian Refugee Council (NRC).

“It’s actually very frustrating that we’ve now lost so many critical weeks since the passage of the Trump peace plan, which said humanitarian aid would continue to flow and Palestinians would not continue to suffer needlessly.”

Most Gazans now live in tents – many of them makeshift structures – after two years of devastating war displaced much of the population.

The sites have been cleaning up after a winter storm that began Friday caused widespread flooding.

There are concerns that disease could spread when rainwater mixes with sewage.

“My children are already sick, look what’s happening to our tents,” Fatima Hamdouna cried in the rain over the weekend as she showed a BBC freelance reporter ankle-deep puddles inside her makeshift home in Gaza City.

“We have no food – the flour is wet. We are the devastated people. Where can we go? There is no shelter to go to now.”

The same is true in the southern city of Khan Younis.

“Our clothes, mattresses and blankets were all flooded,” said Nihad Shabat as he tried to dry his belongings there on Monday.

Her family has been sleeping in a shelter made of sheets and blankets.

“We’re worried about being flooded again. We can’t afford a tent.”

A recent United Nations report found that throughout Gaza More than 80% of the buildings were destroyed, 92% of the buildings in Gaza City were destroyed.

According to the NRC, which has long led the Gaza shelter cluster of about 20 non-governmental organizations (NGOs), some 260,000 Palestinian families, or about 1.5 million people, lack basic supplies for the winter and require emergency shelter assistance.

NGOs say they have been able to deliver only about 19,000 tents to Gaza since the U.S.-brokered ceasefire between Israel and Hamas came into effect on October 10.

They said they had 44,000 pallets of aid – containing non-food items including tents and bedding – blocked from entering. The purchased supplies are currently stuck in Egypt, Jordan and Israel.

Jan Egeland blamed what he called a “bureaucratic, military, politicized quagmire” that “violated all humanitarian principles” for the obstruction.

In March, Israel introduced new registration procedures for aid groups working in Gaza, citing security reasons. It asked them to provide a list of local Palestinian staff.

However, aid groups say donor countries’ data protection laws prevent them from handing over such information.

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

Cogat, the Israeli defense agency that controls the border crossing, told the BBC that “over the past few months” it had coordinated “nearly 190,000 tents and tarps directly into Gaza residents”.

“Under the terms of the ceasefire agreement,” the statement said, “hundreds of trucks carrying food, water, fuel, natural gas, medicines, medical equipment, tents and shelter supplies are allowed to enter the Gaza Strip every day, in coordination with the United Nations, international organizations, donor countries and the private sector.”

“We call on international organizations to coordinate additional tents and tarpaulins and other winter humanitarian responses,” Kogat wrote on X on Sunday.

The company said it was working with the new US-led Civil-Military Coordination Center (CMCC) in southern Israel and other international partners to plan “a targeted humanitarian response for the coming winter.”

International aid groups hope that the China Military Coordination Commission (CMCC) will oversee the implementation of President Trump’s 20-point Gaza peace plan and help ease restrictions on its work.

As a meeting of foreign donors on the reconstruction of the Palestinian territories is expected to take place in Egypt soon, they say basic housing supplies must be allowed in while long-term plans are drawn up.

“What if all these countries came together in Cairo to discuss long-term reconstruction for Palestinians who desperately need aid if they die before the high-rise buildings are rebuilt,” said Egeland, a former U.N. emergency relief coordinator.

“They need a tent today, they don’t need a commitment to build a waterfront building in five years.”

Palestinians told the BBC that many tents brought in by international agencies and Gulf donors were stolen and sold on Gaza’s black market.

Prices have fallen to around $900-$1,000 from around $2,700 (€2,330; £2,050) before the ceasefire, as supply increased slightly, they said.

There have been calls for the international community to help distribute more shelters more equitably.

“I hope everyone will join us in ending this crisis we are going through,” said Alaa al-Dirghali of Khan Younis. “These tents have been in the sun for two years and in the rain for two years, but they can’t withstand this downpour.”

“To this moment, people are rebuilding these broken tents because they have no other choice. I pray to God that those responsible for distributing the tents will give them to the people who really need them. They were stolen and sold to people at very high prices.”

In Gaza City, Rami Deif Allah, displaced from Beit Hanoun, and his elderly mother and children dried their soggy mattresses in the weak sunlight.

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

“We evacuated about 11 times and there was no safe place, so we hid in these simple tents, but it was all in vain. When it rained, they couldn’t protect us,” he said. “The water covered us from top to bottom.”

Like all Gazans, Rami yearns for a permanent home.

“We pray that this war will come to a complete end and that everyone can return home,” he continued. “Even if our houses don’t stand, we will rebuild them with our sweat and blood. This situation of living on the streets is unbearable.”