No water, no electricity, no escape from the heat: summer in Gaza’s tents
Makeshift attempt to deal with Gaza heat amid the devastation
The Palestine Chronicle reports on 20 August 2026:
For hundreds of thousands of displaced Palestinian families in Gaza, surviving another summer now means finding ways to endure scorching temperatures inside tents and makeshift shelters with no electricity, cooling equipment and often barely enough water to drink.
Around 1.9 million of Gaza’s 2.4 million residents are living in tents and temporary shelters, after their homes were destroyed during Israel’s genocidal war on the Gaza Strip.
In southern Gaza, families are improvising whatever protection they can. Some place additional coverings above their tents to keep direct sunlight from reaching the fabric. Others open sections of their shelters in an attempt to create airflow.
Parents sometimes pour water over their children simply to cool their bodies. But with water itself increasingly difficult to obtain, even that basic means of relief has become something families must ration.
‘We Cannot Sit inside the Tent’
Jamalat Siam, who was displaced from Rafah, now lives in a tent in the Al-Mawasi area west of Khan Yunis. She described conditions inside the shelter during the summer as almost unbearable. “In the summer, we cannot sit inside the tent. We put a barrier over it and stay in the shade,” Siam told Anadolu news agency.
Children are particularly vulnerable to the temperatures, she said, sometimes pouring water over themselves for relief and suffering from exhaustion in the heat.
The conditions have forced families to improvise with almost anything available around them. For Siam’s family, that includes the remnants of Gaza itself. Family members collect pieces of rubble from streets and destroyed buildings and pile them around their tent. The debris provides some protection from the sun, but it serves another purpose as well: a makeshift barrier against Israeli gunfire.
Even then, Siam said, there is little feeling of safety. The area “is not safe,” she said, describing persistent fears that Israeli forces could launch another ground incursion.
Daily Struggle