Winter storm rips through Gaza, exposing failure to deliver enough aid to territory
A woman fixes her tent as children shelter inside it at a makeshift camp for displaced Palestinians after heavy rains in Gaza City, December 2025
Wafaa Shurafa, Bassem Mroue and Julia Frankel report for Associated Press on 11 December 2025:
Rains drenched Gaza’s tent camps and dropping temperatures chilled Palestinians huddling inside them Thursday as storm Byron descended on the war-battered territory, showing how two months of a ceasefire have failed to sufficiently address the spiraling humanitarian crisis there.
Children’s sandaled feet disappeared under opaque brown water that flooded the camps. Trucks moved slowly to avoid sending waves of mud toward the tents. Piles of garbage and sewage turned to waterfalls.
“We have been drowned. I don’t have clothes to wear and we have no mattresses left,” said Um Salman Abu Qenas, a mother displaced from east of Khan Younis to a tent camp in Deir al-Balah. She said her family could not sleep the night before because of the water in the tent.
Aid groups say not enough shelter aid is getting into Gaza during the truce. Figures recently released by Israel’s military suggest it has not met the ceasefire stipulation of allowing 600 trucks of aid into Gaza a day, though Israel disputes that finding.
“Cold, overcrowded, and unsanitary environments heighten the risk of illness and infection,” said the U.N. agency for Palestinian refugees, UNRWA, in a terse statement posted on X. “This suffering could be prevented by unhindered humanitarian aid, including medical support and proper shelter.”
Sabreen Qudeeh, also in the Deir al-Balah camp, said her family woke up to rain leaking from their tent’s ceiling and water from the street soaking their mattresses. “My little daughters were screaming and got shocked when they saw water on the floor,” she said.
Ahmad Abu Taha, a Palestinian man in the camp, said there was not a tent that escaped the flooding. “Conditions are very bad, we have old people, displaced, and sick people inside this camp,” he said.
In Israel, heavy rains fell and flood warnings were in effect in several parts of the country — but no major weather-related emergencies were reported as of midday.
The contrasting scenes with Gaza made clear how profoundly the Israel-Hamas war had damaged the territory, destroying the majority of homes. Gaza’s population of around 2 million is almost entirely displaced and most people live in vast tent camps stretching for miles along the beach, exposed to the elements, without adequate flooding infrastructure and with cesspits dug near tents as toilets.
The Palestinian Civil Defense, part of the Hamas-run government, said that since the storm began they have received more than 2,500 distress calls from citizens whose tents and shelters were damaged in all parts of the Gaza Strip.
Aid groups say that Israel is not allowing enough aid into Gaza to begin rebuilding the territory after years of war.