Families living in Gaza traditionally prayed for rain. It was a blessing that provided water for crops and drinking in this parched coastal strip.
But now, with the end of the winter rainy season still more than a month away, they fear a rainy forecast.
In the makeshift Mena Camp for Palestinians displaced by war, a collection of tents erected over the rubble of Gaza City’s port, the winter winds and storms hit here first.
Why We Wrote This
In Gaza, winter has been an added hardship for displaced Palestinians, particularly the tens of thousands living in tents and pushed alongside the windy and frigid coast. Tents are too few, and too flimsy.
The fierce winds push against the thin fabric and nylon sheets, test frayed ropes, and shake poles of the tents that were never meant to last the year. Then the rain comes.
Beneath the tents, puddles and mud quickly form on the ground, which is unable to absorb the rainwater. Children try to sleep on mattresses perched above. Some tents are washed out to sea.
“The tent is freezing,” says Faten Abu Ajwa, a young mother of two, from her damp and frigid shelter. “The children get so cold.”
Her kids repeat the same words to her: “We’re cold. We’re cold.”
In Gaza, winter has been an added hardship for displaced Palestinians across the Strip, particularly the tens of thousands living in tents and pushed alongside the windy and frigid coast.
As temperatures near freezing overnight, and frigid winds that can reach up to 50 mph whip the coastline, relief is hard to find.
For Palestinians in Gaza, the airstrikes may have stopped. But winter is yet another reminder that their suffering has not.
Collapsed tents, hidden hardships
When Ms. Abu Ajwa describes winter nights with her daughter Mariam, age 4, and son Firas, age 2, she mentions not only the discomfort, but her fear.
They do not have enough warm clothing; they wear thin, long-sleeve T-shirts, she says. In Gaza, winter jackets, dry socks, and even an extra blanket have become difficult to find, expensive, or simply unavailable.
When a storm hit Sunday, Ms. Abu Ajwa’s tent collapsed on the family and was nearly washed out to sea.
Water pooled atop the fabric roof until it collapsed, drenching the family. Faten and her husband, Asem, jumped up and began tightening the ropes from every side, trying to push the rain off and keep the tent standing and from being torn away.
“Every winter [since the war] we experience this,” Ms. Abu Ajwa says. “Winter is a worry.”
When the rain leaks through or the fabric tears, she repairs the tent with whatever she can. It has not been replaced since the war began and they left their home in Shujaya, in northern Gaza. It is east of the so-called yellow line where Israeli forces remain, preventing them from returning.
Although the amount of humanitarian aid entering Gaza has tripled since the Israel-Hamas ceasefire last October, the number of available temporary shelters and tents is a fraction of what is needed in Gaza, aid officials tell the Monitor.
Doctors Without Borders warned this month that babies are suffering from severe cold and said it is treating an uptick in respiratory infections. “Israel continues to block or delay the entry of vital supplies like tents, tarpaulins, and temporary housing,” the organization said in a statement.
The Monitor reached out to the Israeli government for comment.
Damp clothing, health challenges
According to Gaza’s health ministry, 24 people, including 21 children, have died from cold exposure. All were living in displacement camps, it says.
Clothing, like the tents in these camps, is rarely dry.
Soon after Sunday’s torrential rainfall, Ms. Abu Ajwa’s daughter began coughing and developed a high fever. Mariam, who was badly wounded earlier in the war, is already susceptible to poor health, her mother says.
Each winter, she says, Mariam is exposed again to the cold, the damp air, and to infections that have spread quickly in crowded makeshift shelters.
Not far away is Doha Abu Riyala. The young mother of four children, including a 3-month-old baby, speaks about winter like someone recounting repeated shock.
“The situation is extremely difficult,” she says. “The tent collapsed on us.”
That night, she says, was chaos: lifting soaked bedding, pulling children away from danger, trying to protect a baby from damp air and freezing wind.
She sent her children to stay with relatives in the Shati refugee camp in their damaged home to sit out the rest of the multiday storm. Yet even these partially standing structures are not safe; the heavy wind and rains have collapsed several damaged buildings across Gaza, killing more than two dozen people, local health authorities say.
Ms. Abu Riyala’s husband, Atef, works at sea as a fisherman, plying the few hundred meters of water that Israel allows boats to traverse offshore. But he has a new job this winter, holding the tent together: tightening ropes, pushing pooled rainwater off the plastic-sheet roof, and reinforcing corners with weights before night returns and gale winds rattle the frail structure.
Along with the cold come other threats: pests, insects, and rodents. Their son was bitten by a rat. The tent never airs out because sunlight rarely reaches inside. Mold settles into everything: their clothes, mattresses, the air.
“When it rains, we flood”
Warming water or preparing milk for their infant is difficult; lighting a fire inside a tent can be dangerous. With little fuel and few safe options, families choose between two dangers: freezing temperatures or the risk of fire.
And when children get sick, the hospitals are overwhelmed and overfull.
“Will anything actually help?” Ms. Abu Riyala exclaims.
She says she had to borrow clothes from her in-laws for their baby; they are thin and barely keep her warm.
Noor al-Attal, who is caring for two daughters, including a malnourished baby, says she and her husband have only a few blankets in their tent and a single mattress they share in turns.
“When it rains, we flood,” she says. “We were pulled out from under the tent” in the recent storm.
Ms. Attal describes winter as a cycle of hard tasks: waiting for a short window of sun to dry bedding, holding a baby constantly in need of warmth, and an older daughter who requires stability and attention.
Ms. Attal asks the nearby fishermen if they can give her a needle and threads from their nets to stitch her tent together.
But when she hears that another cold front is coming, she breaks down.
“I start crying,” she says. “I just need to manage. Where do we go? Where do we live?”
