The recent storm that struck the Gaza Strip revealed the extent of the humanitarian tragedy faced by hundreds of thousands of displaced people: emaciated, shivering bodies, and tattered tents that offer no protection from the cold or the pouring rain. “We were flooded within the first five minutes of rain,” said Mohammed al-Masri, wringing water from his children’s mattresses, in an interview with Al-Akhbar.
“The tent is worn out, and all our pleas for shelter before the storm went unheard.” He added, “The camp is built on impermeable clay soil. The torrential rains turned the place into mud. We’ve been wading through mud since morning.”
More than a million people in the Gaza Strip, living in tents for days, have appealed to international and local organizations for a serious response commensurate with the scale of the disaster.
However, the aid provided by these organizations falls far short of meeting the minimum needs. Relief agencies attribute the slow response to Israeli obstruction of the entry of urgent supplies. Israel allows only a few dozen trucks carrying secondary supplies to enter Gaza, while preventing the entry of substantial quantities of building materials, tarpaulins, and winter tents.
Even when these materials are available, they are of very low quality, unsuitable for the living conditions of Gazans. In the “Intelligence” camp northwest of Gaza City, where hundreds of tents are crammed together to accommodate thousands of families, displaced people fled the tents at the first sign of the storm. Um Mahmoud said, “The tents are made of fabric that leaks. The tent is useless. We suffered from the cold, and we went out into the open because it’s less cold than inside the tent.”
As for the city’s streets, the storm revealed the extent of the damage inflicted by the Israeli war machine on the infrastructure. Main streets were transformed into pools and large bodies of water after the water and sewage networks overflowed with massive amounts of water. According to the Gaza Municipality, Israel has destroyed 800,000 kilometers of water and sewage networks and continues to prevent the entry of equipment and tools necessary for their maintenance.
Ismail al-Thawabta, director of the Government Media Office, confirmed that the storm that hit the Gaza Strip damaged approximately 22,000 tents belonging to displaced people, leaving more than 288,000 families without protection from the cold and rain.
The losses caused by the storm were estimated at around $3.5 million, after it flooded vast areas of camps, rendering them uninhabitable, and also damaged the rudimentary sewage systems. Schools used as displacement centers also experienced flooded corridors and disruptions to temporary water networks, while the food sector suffered significant losses with large quantities of food spoiled and aid intended for distribution lost. More than 10 mobile medical points were also rendered inoperable, and essential medicines and supplies were lost due to the difficulty of movement in the flooded areas.
