“The mattress, the blanket, everything, even the clothes, have become soaked with water.” Um Mustafa, a Gaza resident, described to CNN on Friday how the rain got into her tent. The only food she had left, a bag of flour and rice, was ruined too. She woke the neighbors in the middle of the night, screaming for help.
Munir Al-Boursh, director general of the Gaza-based Health Ministry, told CNN that 14 people had died over the past 72 hours in severe weather across the territory. Three of them were children. One was an eight-month-old girl named Rahaf, who died of hypothermia, her family said.
Tents and ruins give way
Two years of war pushed many Palestinians into tents and makeshift shelters, and much of the enclave lies in ruins. Authorities and residents said tents, temporary shelters and even buildings weakened by Israeli bombardment collapsed on families inside.
The Hamas-run government media office said more than 27,000 tents had been swept away or flooded. It called the situation a “complex humanitarian disaster” affecting at least 250,000 people.
Oxfam said in a statement on Saturday that Palestinians were “wading through sewage, mud and debris with no proper shelter.” The group blamed what it called “the systematic obstruction of aid.” Israeli authorities, it said, “continue to block the entry of basic shelter materials, fuel and water infrastructure.” Its verdict was blunt: “When access is denied, storms become deadly. This suffering is being manufactured by policy, not weather.”
Israel’s response
COGAT, the Israeli agency that coordinates aid distribution in Gaza, rejected that account. It said Israel “fully upholds” its obligation under the truce to let aid trucks through. According to the agency, hundreds of trucks enter daily with food, water, fuel, gas, medicines, medical equipment, tents and shelter gear, and close to 270,000 tents and tarpaulins have been handed over to residents in recent months. COGAT added that it is planning “a catered humanitarian response for the upcoming winter.”
A truce with gaps
Israel and Hamas agreed a truce in October that freed all the living Israeli hostages and stopped the two-year war. Israel let aid in to carry out the first stage of the deal.
Gaps remain, though. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu embraced the agreement publicly in September, yet the US is pressing to move into the next phase while Israel ties major steps to the return of the last deceased hostage. Israel has also resisted American efforts to end a standoff with an isolated pocket of Hamas militants in the Israeli-occupied parts of southern Gaza.
