Almost all the flimsy tents in the Palestinian displacement camps have been rendered unusable due to the harsh winter conditions.
A new storm is forecast to hit Gaza, further exacerbating the suffering of hundreds of thousands of Palestinians living in makeshift tents in displacement camps no longer fit to withstand the harsh winter weather.
Israel’s more than two-year-long genocidal war has forced nearly all of Gaza’s two million residents to leave their homes and live in these temporary shelters.
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Last week, the Gaza Government Media Office reported that 127,000 of the 135,000 tents in displacement camps have been rendered unusable due to recent extreme weather.
“The reality on the ground tells a very painful and bleak story,” said Al Jazeera’s Tareq Abu Azzoum, reporting from Gaza City on Monday.
“Hundreds of thousands of displaced families continue to live in torn tents and roofless houses exposed to rain, cold and freezing nights.”
This suffering is directly caused by Israeli restrictions, Abu Azzoum said, as Israel has not allowed the “entry of prefabricated mobile housing units and construction materials that are essential for winter protection” or the free flow of desperately needed basic humanitarian aid.
Under a US-brokered ceasefire, which went into effect on October 10 and which Israel has violated hundreds of times almost daily, aid deliveries were supposed to increase significantly, with at least 600 trucks a day entering Gaza to meet the needs of the population.
However, the Government Media Office says only an average of 145 trucks have entered Gaza since the ceasefire.
In an attempt to alleviate their abject misery, Palestinians have been “improvising by reinforcing their makeshift tents with plastic sheets, staying fully clothed, and burning leftovers inside the makeshift tents to use as heat due to the unaffordability of fuel supplies and heating mechanisms across the Strip,” Abu Azzoum said.
Winter in Palestine can be “very brutal,” but what makes it even worse is that it adds to months of “displacement, hunger and exhaustion,” he added.
Harsh winter conditions have also caused buildings previously damaged by relentless Israeli shelling to collapse, killing at least 25 people since mid-December, according to Gaza’s Health Ministry.
“The elderly, the sick and children are among those most affected” by the harsh winter conditions, Abu Azzoum said.
Deaths caused by cold exposure have risen to 24, including 21 children, the Government Media Office reported last week.
“All of the victims were displaced Palestinians living in forced displacement camps,” he said in a statement.
A spokesman for the Palestinian Civil Defense in Gaza said last week that hospitals across the territory have been seeing an influx of patients, particularly children, with cold-related illnesses, and that the organization had received hundreds of calls for support due to the extreme cold.
The Palestinian Meteorological Department warned of the risk of frost and icy conditions in a polar air mass over much of Palestine on Tuesday night and Wednesday morning, Palestinian news agency Wafa reported.
