Like many Gazans, Ahmed al-Omari is bracing for another harsh winter with its bitter cold and flood-prone rains, living in dilapidated tents and dilapidated homes. He and other young men are rushing to fill empty sacks with sand, sacks that were previously used for flour aid from the World Food Programme. Busy as he works, as if racing against time, al-Omari told us, “These are the flour sacks we used to retrieve from the brink of death just to eat. Now they’re sacks we fill with sand to create a barrier against the rainwater. We flood every year, and we put these sacks in the hope that the rainwater won’t get in.”
Al-Omari was referring to the dangers faced by aid distribution operations in the Gaza Strip, which have already resulted in the deaths of civilians seeking relief.
A Bitter Humanitarian Reality
According to the International Organization for Migration, nearly two million people in Gaza still need shelter assistance. Rain has already begun, and the ongoing, and increasingly intense, El Niño phenomenon threatens to bring even more rain in the coming months. In an interview with UN News today from the Jordanian capital, Amman, Carl Baker, the regional crisis coordinator and head of the organization’s response in Gaza, confirmed that humanitarian agencies working on the ground are already aware of a bitter reality: “The amount of aid we can bring into Gaza will not meet the needs of the population.”
