Gazans displaced by war now face a new threat: winter

The beaches of Gaza are no longer for day trips. Tens of thousands of people now have to live on the coastline, forced to leave their homes during the war.

In recent days they have come under a new kind of assault: from winter seas battering their flimsy, makeshift dwellings.

“Nothing is left in the tent: not mattresses, bedding, bread, everything was taken. The sea took it,” says Mohammed al-Halabi, in Deir al-Balah.

“We rescued a two-month-old child who was dragged out to sea.”

Nearly all of Gaza’s 2.3 million population is now displaced and nine in ten of those living in shelters are in tents, the UN says.

With temperatures plummeting, many people have been falling sick. There have been floods of rainwater and sewage.

“My children’s feet, their heads—everything is freezing,” Shaima Issa tells the BBC in Khan Younis. “My daughter has a fever because of the cold. We’re essentially living on the streets, surrounded by strips of fabric. Everyone here is sick and coughing.”

“When it rains on us, we’re drenched,” adds her neighbour, Salwa Abu Nimer, crying. “The heavy rain floods us, and we don’t have a waterproof cover. The water seeps into the tent, we wear our clothes wet.”

“No flour, no food, no drink, no shelter,” she went on. “What is this life I’m living? I go to the ends of the earth just to feed my children.”

While the situation is worst in the north, UN officials are warning of dire shortages of medicines, food, shelter and fuel across Gaza, describing the situation as “catastrophic.”

There are long queues for charity handouts in parts of central and southern Gaza where most people are living.

On successive days, our local cameramen have filmed hundreds of people crowding outside bakeries where there is very little bread. At times, there are crushes as those waiting surge forward.

“I need a loaf of bread. I have pain, diabetes, and high blood pressure. I can’t push through crowds of people; I’m afraid I’ll suffocate and die,” says Hanan al-Shamali, who is in Deir al-Balah but originally comes from northern Gaza.

“I need bread so that I can feed the orphans I take care of. Every morning, I come here. In the end, do I get bread or not? Sometimes I get it, but most of the time, I don’t.”

At the Kerem Shalom crossing, Israel’s main crossing point with Gaza, last week journalists were shown lorries moving goods that had gone through security checks.

Aid entering the Palestinian territory remains at some of the lowest levels of the past year. Israel blames aid agencies for distribution problems.

“Unfortunately we're still seeing that the biggest backlog for humanitarian aid getting to where it needs to get to is the distribution capabilities of the international organisations, as the 800 trucks worth of aid around me attest to," said Shimon Freedman, spokesman for Cogat, part of the Israeli military that control the crossings.

But inside Gaza, humanitarian workers say armed gangs have been looting incoming supplies brought through Kerem Shalom amid increased lawlessness. This has now led the biggest UN agency operating in the territory, Unrwa, to pause its use of this route for deliveries.

The overall picture, says Antoine Renard, local head of the UN’s World Food Programme, is of Palestinians facing “a daily struggle for survival”.

"The levels of hunger, devastation and destruction we are seeing now in Gaza is worse than ever before. People cannot cope anymore,” Mr Renard says. “There is barely any food coming in while markets are empty.”

Amid the destruction in Gaza, there is still no end in sight to the war. Just the expectation of more suffering, as cold weather sets in.