Shelter and food in short supply as Gaza braces for winter

Everyone knew what was coming. But there was little the inhabitants of the tent cities that crowd the shore of southern Gaza could do as the storm approached. Sabah al-Breem, 62, was sitting with one of her daughters and several grandchildren in their current home - a makeshift construction of tarpaulins and salvaged wood - when the wind and driving rain broke across.

- Jason Burke

“Everything collapsed ... We repaired our shelter but in the night it fell down again under the heavy rain. All our belongings were soaked. The day the winds blew was a black day for us,” said Breem, originally from Khan Younis but displaced multiple times since October 2023.

The half million or so Palestinians living in al-Mawasi, a cramped coastal zone in southern Gaza, are bracing for a grim winter. For many it will be the third they have faced after being displaced during the conflict.

The storm that arrived earlier this month revealed how more than 2 million Palestinians in Gaza still face a humanitarian crisis, despite the ceasefire.

Shelter is the most pressing need, aid agencies say. Most homes in Gaza have been destroyed or rendered uninhabitable by successive Israeli offensives, or lie east of the new “yellow line” that divides the territory into a zone under Israeli military control and one under de facto Hamas authority.

There is nowhere for the displaced to go. In the aftermath of the storm, barefoot children splashed in muddy puddles as women made tea outside.