Tents supplied to Palestinians 'will not withstand winter in Gaza'

Thousands of tents supplied by China, Egypt and Saudi Arabia to shelter displaced Palestinians in Gaza offer only limited protection against rain and wind, an assessment compiled by shelter specialists in the devastated territory has revealed.

- Jason Burke Jerusalem Seham Tantesh Gaza

The assessment will undermine claims that Palestinians in Gaza are being supplied with adequate shelter. Fierce storms in recent weeks blew down or damaged thousands of tents, affecting at least 235,000 people, according to UN estimates.

Prepared by the Palestine Shelter Cluster, which coordinates the activities of nearly 700 non-government organisations in Palestine and is jointly chaired by the Red Cross and the UN, the assessment found that newly delivered tents housing hundreds of thousands of people would “likely need to be replaced”.

“The fabric [of the Egyptian tents] tears easily as sewing quality is poor,” it reported. “The fabric is not waterproof. Other issues include small windows, weak structure, no flooring, the roof collects water due to the design of the tent, and no mesh for openings.”

Tents from Saudi Arabia were criticised as having “non-waterproof light fabric, weak structure” and tents donated by China were “very light” and not waterproof.

Those supplied by Qatar, the United Arab Emirates and the United Nations were judged to have met the specifications of UN experts.

The findings - based on 9,000 responses to a poll on social media in November, observations “from partners on the ground” and “community feedback” - will raise new questions about the quality of aid being supplied directly to Gaza by individual countries that have been favoured by Israeli authorities seeking to bypass the UN.