The first rains of the season have submerged thousands of shelters and tents across the Strip, killing five people. The flooding adds to an already far wider humanitarian crisis.
A vast expanse of water and mud. That is what the storm during the night of 6 to 7 November brought for thousands of Palestinians. The rains affected all five administrative areas of the Strip, but the heaviest toll was recorded west of Deir al-Balah. Three children and two women died, as reported by the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, known as OCHA.
But the flooding also struck the already highly vulnerable infrastructure. Two clinics, An Nakheel and Al Yasmin, were damaged by flooding and wind, and two medical points lost tents and roofing. Furthermore, compounding the emergency, several sewage networks burst, causing rainwater to mix with sewage water, effectively increasing health risks for the population.
How Palestinians live in Gaza
The humanitarian crisis in Gaza is compounded above all by a glaring housing crisis. It is enough to consider that 65 per cent of the Palestinian population (that is, 1.4 million people) lives in tents and makeshift shelters. What is particularly striking is that 560,000 children are living in critical or catastrophic housing conditions, according to a recent assessment by the Palestine Shelter Cluster.
As if that were not enough, in October the United Nations World Food Programme announced that a funding shortfall had forced it to cut food assistance to Gaza by around one third, leaving half a million people without basic support. Today, hunger figures remain high. It is estimated that 1.4 million people, or 67 per cent of Gaza's population, are experiencing severe food insecurity, classified as IPC Phase 3 or above. Many people are forced to burn waste, plastic, shoes, cardboard or tyres to light fires and cook food.
Added to this is the widespread prevalence of communicable diseases, which is not increasing relative to previous surveys but persists over time. According to OCHA, nearly one in five consultations in the period 4–10 October involved communicable diseases, primarily respiratory infections and skin diseases. The causes include shortages of essential medicines, reduced hospital capacity, the accumulation of waste, the absence of personal hygiene and overcrowding. The storm worsened the situation: the director of the al-Shifa medical complex in Gaza City reported that the hospital's emergency department flooded and was out of service for around four hours.
Humanitarian aid has been slowed down
To ease the emergency, aid continues to come in, but in quantities and ways deemed insufficient. After the flooding, according to OCHA, partners (including international humanitarian organisations, UN agencies and local emergency teams) installed 50,000 sandbags to prevent displacement sites from flooding, and distributed winter clothing to 3,364 families, including 8,432 children. The key sticking point, however, remains the entry of goods. Although the so-called ceasefire announced over a year ago provided for the entry of caravans as a more lasting alternative to tents, the Israeli authorities have repeatedly blocked their access, according to Save The Children. In the meantime, more than 150,000 purchased tents are sitting outside Gaza, ready to be shipped, of which around 117,000 belong to the Egyptian Relief Committee at Al-Arish.
