Shelters advocate for Gazans as winter rains raise fears of more illness, death

Aid agencies have reiterated 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 need emergency help with shelters.

“This winter we are going to lose lives. Children and families will perish,” says Jan Egeland, secretary general of the Norwegian Refugee Council (NRC).

“It is actually very frustrating that we have lost so many crucial weeks since the adoption of Trump’s peace plan, which said that humanitarian aid would flow and that Palestinians would no longer suffer unnecessarily.”

With the majority of the population displaced after two years of a devastating war, most Gazans now live in tents, many of them improvised.

They have been cleaning up after widespread flooding due to a winter storm that began Friday.

There are fears that diseases could spread because rainwater has mixed with sewage.

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

“We have no food, the flour is completely wet. We are people who have been destroyed. Where are we going? There is no shelter we can go to now.”

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

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

His family has been sleeping inside a shelter made of sheets and blankets.

“We are worried about flooding again. We can’t afford to buy a tent.”

A recent UN report found that throughout Gaza more than 80% of buildings had been destroyed and 92% in Gaza City.

According to the NRC, which has long led the so-called Gaza Shelter Group, made up of some 20 non-governmental organizations (NGOs), some 260,000 Palestinian families, or around 1.5 million people, need emergency shelter assistance as they lack the basics to get through the winter.

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

They say they have blocked entry to 44,000 pallets of aid, which contain non-food items including tents and bedding. Purchased supplies are currently stuck in Egypt, Jordan and Israel.

Jan Egeland blames the heist on what he calls “a bureaucratic, military and politicized quagmire” that goes “against all humanitarian principles.”

In March, Israel introduced a new registration process for aid groups working in Gaza, citing security reasons. Requires them to provide lists of their local Palestinian staff.

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

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

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

On Sunday he posted on

“We call on international organizations to coordinate more tents and tarps and other winter humanitarian responses.”

It says it is working with the new US-led Civil-Military Coordination Center (CMCC) created in southern Israel and other international partners to plan “an adapted humanitarian response for next winter.”

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

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

“It would not be good for all these nations to meet in Cairo to discuss the long-term reconstruction of Palestinians who are in great need if they die before their skyscrapers can be rebuilt,” says Egeland, who was previously UN Emergency Relief Coordinator.

“They need a tent today, they don’t need the promise of a waterfront structure in five years.”

Palestinians have told the BBC that many tents, brought in by international agencies and Gulf donors, have been stolen and are available on Gaza’s black market.

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

There are calls for international help to distribute more shelters and more fairly.

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

“Until now, people are rebuilding these broken tents because they have no other alternative. I pray to God that those responsible for distributing the tents give them to those who really need them. They steal them and sell them to people at a very expensive price.”

In Gaza City, Rami Deif Allah, displaced from Beit Hanoun, was drying soaked mattresses under the weak sun, with his elderly mother and children.

He said a relative had given him a waterproof tent but it was still flooded.

“We were evacuated about 11 times and there was no safe place for us, so we took refuge in these humble tents, but all in vain. When the rain came they couldn’t protect us,” he said. “The water flooded us from above and below.”

Like all Gazans, Rami longs for permanent housing.

“We pray that this war ends completely and that everyone returns to their homes,” he continued. “Even if we don’t find our houses standing, with our sweat and blood we will rebuild them. This situation of living on the streets is unbearable.”