Palestinians struggle to protect themselves from cold as winter hits Gaza

Many of the nearly 2 million Palestinians displaced by Israel are struggling to protect themselves from wind, cold and rain as winter hits besieged Gaza.

There is a shortage of blankets and warm clothing, little wood for fires, and the tents and patched-together tarps families are living in have grown increasingly threadbare after months of heavy use, according to aid workers and residents.

Shadia Aiyada, who was displaced from the southern city of Rafah to the coastal area of Muwasi, has only one blanket and a hot water bottle to keep her eight children from shivering inside their fragile tent.

"We get scared every time we learn from the weather forecast that rainy and windy days are coming up because our tents are lifted with the wind. We fear that strong windy weather would knock out our tents one day while we're inside," she said.

With nighttime temperatures that can drop into the mid-to-high single digits Celsius, Aiyada fears that her kids will get sick without warm clothing.

When they fled their home, her children only had their summer clothes, she said. They have been forced to borrow some from relatives and friends to keep warm.

The United Nations warns of people living in precarious makeshift shelters that might not survive the winter.

At least 945,000 people need winterisation supplies, which have become prohibitively expensive in Gaza, the UN said in an update Tuesday. The UN also fears infectious disease, which spiked last winter, will climb again amid rising malnutrition.

Winter aid blocked

The UN Agency for Palestinian Refugees, known as UNRWA, has been planning all year for winter in Gaza, but the aid it was able to get into the territory is "not even close to being enough for people," said Louise Wateridge, an agency spokesperson.

UNRWA distributed 6,000 tents over the past four weeks in northern Gaza but was unable to get them to other parts of the enclave, including areas where there has been Israeli bombardment.

About 22,000 tents have been stuck in Jordan, and 600,000 blankets and 33 truckloads of mattresses have been sitting in Egypt since the summer because the agency doesn't have Israeli approval or a safe route to bring them into Gaza and because it had to prioritise desperately needed food aid, Wateridge said.

Many of the mattresses and blankets have since been looted or destroyed by the weather and rodents, she said.

The International Rescue Committee is struggling to bring in children's winter clothing because there "are a lot of approvals to get from relevant authorities," said Dionne Wong, the organisation's deputy director of programs for the occupied Palestinian territories.

"The ability of Palestinians to prepare for winter is essentially very limited," Wong said.

For now, the winter clothing for sale in Gaza's markets is far too expensive for most people to afford, residents and aid workers said.

Deadly cold

Reda Abu Zarada, 50, who was displaced from northern Gaza with her family, said the adults sleep with the children in their arms to keep them warm inside their tent.

"Rats walk on us at night because we don't have doors and tents are torn. The blankets don't keep us warm. We feel frost coming out from the ground. We wake up freezing in the morning," she said. "I'm scared of waking up one day to find one of the children frozen to death."

On Thursday night, she fought through knee pain exacerbated by cold weather to fry zucchini over a fire made of paper and cardboard scraps outside their tent. She hoped the small meal would warm the children before bed.

Omar Shabet, who is displaced from Gaza City and staying with his three children, feared that lighting a fire outside his tent would make his family a target for Israeli warplanes.

"We go inside our tents after sunset and don't go out because it is very cold, and it gets colder by midnight," he said. "My 7-year-old daughter almost cries at night because of how cold she is."

Israel has killed over 45,000 Palestinians, mostly women and children, so far in the blockaded enclave.

In its carnage, Tel Aviv has caused a massive shortage of basic necessities, including food, water, electricity and medicine, while displacing almost the entire population.

The International Criminal Court issued arrest warrants last month for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his former Defence Minister Yoav Gallant for war crimes and crimes against humanity in Gaza.

Israel also faces a genocide case at the International Court of Justice for its war on Gaza.