Gaza’s first winter storm floods about 70,000 tents as 50,000 more sit at the border

For most of Gaza’s more than 2 million people, home is a tent. On Saturday, local time, the first winter storm of the season put about 70,000 of them under water in 12 hours, according to Gaza’s Hamas-run government media office.

The rain began on Friday night and kept falling through Saturday, washing away shelters and soaking mattresses, blankets and clothes. Water rose 30 to 40 centimetres at several camps. Injuries were reported, but no deaths. Three abandoned houses collapsed without hurting anyone, a partially collapsed building in Nuseirat was evacuated, and two people were hurt when a wall fell in northern Gaza.

Civil defence received about 1,500 distress calls. The emergency department at al-Shifa Medical Complex in Gaza City flooded and was out of service for about four hours. The media office put the first estimate of losses at about US$3 million.

“What we feared has actually happened,” civil defence spokesman Mahmoud Basal said. Its director, Raed al-Dahshan, said the service did not have “a single tarpaulin or a single tent”.

Why is Gaza so exposed to one storm?

Because more than three years after the war began, most people still have no roof. Most of Gaza’s population has been displaced, and most now live in tent camps. More than 900,000 people are sheltering in al-Mawasi, a stretch of sandy coast in the south, and Gaza’s emergency committee says more than 125,000 families on the shoreline risk having their tents swept away by the sea.

Local officials say they cannot pump floodwater or clear debris because of fuel shortages and the loss of hundreds of vehicles, including bulldozers and water pumps, which they say Israel destroyed during the war. Gaza’s emergency committee says the territory needs about 200,000 tents and heating supplies before winter sets in.

One resident said she spent four days sleeping on blankets after a smaller storm two weeks ago. “This is the first day of rain, and of course we are already flooded,” she said.

Who is blocking the shelter?

Each side blames the other. Gaza’s government media office held Israel “fully responsible”. Mohammed Salha, director of the Palestinian NGO Network, said between 180 and 200 trucks are entering Gaza a day, against the 600 agreed under the ceasefire’s humanitarian protocol, and only about 40 of those carry aid. He said 50,000 tents are waiting on the Egyptian side of the border, and that caravans meant to replace tents under the protocol have not been allowed in.

COGAT, the Israeli Defence Ministry agency that coordinates aid to Gaza, did not immediately respond to the accusations. On Friday it said it had stepped up sanitation work ahead of the rain with international organisations, and that four more vacuum trucks for sewage pumping and repairs had entered Gaza this week through the International Committee of the Red Cross. Israel has said reconstruction will not begin until Hamas agrees to disarm and give up control of Gaza.

Where does the ceasefire stand?

The US-brokered ceasefire agreed last year called for Gaza to be rebuilt, but little has moved. Negotiators have not agreed on terms for Hamas to disarm or for Israeli troops to withdraw, and Israeli forces still control about two-thirds of the territory, from which residents have been ordered to leave. That squeezes more than 2 million people into the remaining third, much of it low-lying coast.

What does winter mean from here?

The storm that hit Gaza also swept Israel, where about 50 millimetres of rain fell in an hour in Binyamina, south of Haifa, on Saturday morning. Israel’s forecasters expect the rain to ease, with light showers and slightly cooler temperatures through the coming week.

But the winter has barely begun, and doctors fear the cold as much as the water. Al-Shifa’s director, Mohammed Abu Salmiya, warned of deaths among newborns “in the dozens and perhaps the hundreds” if shelter does not improve. Palestinian authorities say more than 74,000 people have been killed in Gaza since the war began after the Hamas-led attacks of 7 October 2023, which killed about 1,200 people in Israel.