Winter storm batters homeless in Gaza


January 8, 2015
Sarah Benton
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A family in Gaza tries to shelter from Huda in their destroyed home.

Palestine shuts down as Storm Huda strikes Holy Land

By Ma’an news
January 08, 2015

BETHLEHEM — Millions of Palestinians bunkered down at home Wednesday as they faced down the first day of huge winter storm that has brought a mixture of rain, hail, and snow accompanied by heavy winds crashing into the Holy Land this week.

Palestinian authorities on Wednesday afternoon announced that all official business would be closed Thursday because of the storm, which has been nicknamed “Huda” in Palestine and Jordan and “Zina” in Lebanon, and urged people to take safety measures in the coming days.

The storm is expected to last until Sunday, bringing snow in higher areas around Jerusalem, Ramallah, and Hebron in the occupied West Bank as well as in northern Israel, while flooding is expected along the coastal plain, including in the Gaza Strip.

Temperatures have dipped far below averages and are expected to hover around or just above freezing in the West Bank both day and night over the next week.

Palestinian authorities on Wednesday praised the role of civil defense units and medical centers until now, as they worked overtime to respond to emergencies and braced for the work to be done in the coming days.

Already in some areas across the region temporary electricity cuts have been reported, but many fear the worst is yet to come.

The worries are especially high in the Gaza Strip, where widespread flooding only last month in a much smaller storm in December prompted the United Nations to declare a state of emergency.

Official Palestinian news agency Wafa said that dozens of homes were already flooded by Wednesday afternoon, forcing “hundreds” from their homes.

The agency quoted Gaza municipal authorities as as warning of a coming “humanitarian crisis.”

Nearly 110,000 Palestinians were left homeless by Israel’s bloody summer assault on the besieged coastal enclave, and the vast majority remain without any permanent residence due to Israeli restrictions on the import of reconstruction material.

In Dec. 2013, one of the worst winter storms in 50 years caused flooding of around half-a-meter in parts of Gaza, forcing at least 10,000 to flee their homes.

Electricity shortages due to Israel’s eight-year-long siege of Gaza and the subsequent fuel shortages it has caused, meanwhile, delayed clean up, as water pumps could not be fully deployed.


A Gaza street during flooding in December 2014. The destruction of drainage and sewage systems – some still not repaired from IDF shelling in 2012 – makes the people of Gaza especially vulnerable to the recent years of unusually heavy rainfall and freezing cold. Photo by MaanImages.

With more than 100,000 Gazans already homeless this time around, many fear this year’s storm could have deadly serious consequences.

Gaza electricity authorities only recently declared that irregular power outages would be put in place to deal with continuing fuel shortages as a result of the Israeli blockade, on top of the “six hours on, 12 hours off” schedule that is already in regular usage.

In the West Bank, meanwhile, many fear a repeat of the Dec. 2013 experience with Storm Alexa, when massive power outages struck across the region as a result of downed power lines.

In that storm, Israeli engineers insisted on repairing lines instead Israel and those serving Jewish settlements in the West Bank before helping their Palestinian colleagues in the West Bank repair connections, leaving hundreds of thousands of Palestinians without power even as Israeli Jews in neighbouring settlements received electricity.


Great fun for children – but adults fear the heavy snow that has fallen on the refugee camps, this one for Syrians in Beka’a valley, Lebanon, will cause the roofs to collapse on those huddled inside. Photo by Hussein Malla / AP

The storm has already caused major suffering across the Levant, killing at least two Syrian refugees in Lebanon due to cold.

Millions of Syrian and Palestinian refugees who fled Syria remain scattered in lightly-protected camps across Jordan, Turkey, Lebanon, and Iraq, and fears are growing that not enough has to been done to help them brace for the winds, rains, and snow expected to pummel the region.



Photographers shiver in the Huda storm, Gaza city, January 8th, 2015. Photo by Abed Rahim Khatib, photographer from Gaza.

Huda hits Gaza hard

By Julie Webb-Pullman. Today in Gaza
January 08, 2015

This storm Huda is truly the most terrifyingly noisy, bitterly cold and miserable storm imaginable.

Even in a house with fully-glazed windows shut, the wind whistles seemingly straight through them. Imagine how it is for the thousands of families with plastic (if it has not blown away), wood, rusty iron sheets for windows, or none at all – if I couldn’t sleep with four walls, a roof and theoretically intact windows then how could anyone with less? Imagine Gaza’s homeless’ night of bitter hopelessness…

The gusts were so strong I thought the windows were going to blow in. I could not decide whether to drag a mattress into the internal room away from the windows and risk my core body temperature dropping to a hypothermic level, or staying where I was huddled under a quilt and blanket, four layers of clothing and socks, with a coat on and a woollen shawl over my head, where at least I was maintaining an almost normal temperature. Imagine what it was like to be in the ruins of part-destroyed houses – maybe one or two walls, a bit of roof or nylon above your head if it hasn’t been ripped away by the wind – or even just a tent, which thousands of Gazans are forced to live in? With only the few clothes they were able to salvage from the dust and destruction of their homes?

Even with all my windows closed, the wind still forced the rain in, and it still lays in pools on the floor of two rooms. Even with internal doors closed and towels rolled and stuffed along the bottom to stop the draughts the towels literally flew across the floor halfway into the room. The wind even whistled between the joins in the wood of the doors. The internal room, even with all doors closed, was like a wind tunnel. Imagine a room with two walls…or none at all.

I took my chances and stayed in my bed – but I could not sleep – the noise was terrifying, the gusts battering against the glass, the rattling and tearing of the frames made any attempt at rest futile. Waiting for the windows to explode or the frames to be ripped from the walls was just like waiting for another Israeli missile during the last aggression – will THIS be the one that gets me? Imagine the families huddled together in the rubble, freezing, wind-battered, terrified, wondering which of them will not wake in the morning, which seems never to come…

Just like unified government. Just like reconstruction materials. Just like the lifting of the siege. Just like Palestinian rights. All promised but never delivered, like a day that never dawns.

Huda. Not just a storm, but an allegory.

The morning may now have broken, the winds died a little – but the bitter cold remains. And while the Palestinian Authority continues the tempest of its soft coup against Hamas, its collaboration with Israel and Egypt, and its apartheid policies against Gaza, there can be no thaw, no calm.

Like Huda, the PA is almost spent. The people who have survived will salvage what they can from the wreckage and work together to rebuild what it has destroyed. Only then can there be a sunny new day for Gaza – and Palestine.

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