A harsh winter is approaching…the displaced people of Gaza are fighting a new war under worn out tents Politics news

The displaced Gazan today finds himself forced to remain in the open air after more than 300,000 homes were destroyed, and the entry of new tents and necessary winter shelter supplies was prevented, with the approaching winter season exacerbating the suffering after two years of bombing, starvation, and displacement.

Official figures confirm that 93% of the tents have worn out and become uninhabitable, at a time when the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA) says that winter shelter supplies – sufficient for a million people – are piled up in warehouses and prohibited from entering by an Israeli decision.

On the ground, about two million displaced people live in worn-out tents that do not protect against the cold of winter or the heat of summer, in camps that suffer from a severe shortage of basic necessities of life and water and sanitation services.

Families are also living in a state of heavy anticipation, not for fear of rain, but for fear of drowning, amid demands for the provision of rain-resistant tents, housing, and blankets that might ease the severity of the cold.

“War after war”

In this context, Hudhayfah Al-Lafi, an official in one of the camps for the displaced in Khan Yunis (south of the Gaza Strip), referred to what he described as a “post-war war” that the displaced people have been waging – with worn-out tents for more than two years – and they were forced to make primitive tents under an applied Israeli siege.

Al-Lafi said, in an interview with Al Jazeera Humanitarian Window, that the displaced people collected worn-out pieces of cloth and shattered plastic sheets to make temporary tents that “do not withstand the wind and rain,” holding the occupation authorities responsible for leaving hundreds of thousands of Palestinians out in the open.

According to the spokesman, the harsh climate conditions of cold and strong winds “increased the suffering of the population, especially children and the sick, amid a shortage of medicines and the inability to provide the minimum humanitarian needs.”

Difficult situation

In the same context, the mayor of Khan Yunis, Engineer Alaa Al-Batta, described the situation as “very difficult” despite the cessation of killing, noting that there are more than 900,000 indigenous people and displaced people, including tens of thousands who were forcibly displaced from Rafah.

According to the spokesman, half of the current residents of the Khan Yunis municipality are displaced, while worn-out tents still provide fragile shelter for large numbers of tents along the coastal strip between Rafah and Khan Yunis in the south.

During his talk to Al Jazeera Humanitarian Window, he warned of the flooding of camps for the displaced in the winter due to the fragility of the tents, the lack of suitable alternatives, and the failure to introduce mobile homes for the displaced.

The mayor of Khan Yunis called on mediators and Arab and regional countries to take urgent and effective action, ensuring the provision of the minimum number of tents and basic shelter needs.

He stressed that what is happening constitutes a direct threat to life, “as the introduction of humanitarian aid is a natural right that is not linked to a ceasefire or any political calculations.”

During this month, the government media office in Gaza announced that the rate of destruction in the Palestinian Strip reached about 90%, two years after the war that left 68,527 Palestinian martyrs, 170,395 injured, most of them children and women, and destruction that included 90% of the infrastructure, with the cost of reconstruction estimated by the United Nations at about 70 billion dollars.