GAZA (The Thursday Times) — The deaths and damage caused by last weekend’s rainstorm in Gaza were “preventable,” the UN and aid groups working in the territory have said, blaming Israeli restrictions on supplies and saying more than 150,000 tents are waiting outside the Strip.
“Children and adults were killed, critical services suspended, and thousands of family shelters flooded, swept away, or torn apart – not by the storm alone, but by policy decisions,” the Humanitarian Country Team for the Occupied Palestinian Territory said in an appeal on Friday. The team brings together the heads of UN agencies and of international and Palestinian aid groups.
At least four people, including three young children, were killed on Sunday night when a sand embankment collapsed onto tents at a camp south of Deir al-Balah, medics said. A nine-month-old boy died of cold in his family’s tent in Khan Younis this week.
The team said it had presented a plan months ago to prepare displaced families for winter, covering shelter, health services, drainage, and sandbags, with a list of supplies Gaza would need, from tents, warm clothes, and blankets to equipment for pumping water, clearing rubble, and removing unexploded ordnance.
“Yet Israeli policies continue to obstruct the entry of critical items as well as access to most of Gaza’s land, including areas away from the shoreline that are less prone to flooding,” it said. Deliveries face several layers of approval, limited capacity at the crossings, and narrow or unpredictable delivery windows, it added.
More than 150,000 tents bought by aid groups and governments are ready to go, most of them in Al Arish in Egypt, about 50 kilometres from Khan Younis, the team said, while each new storm destroys more tents inside Gaza. “Success must be measured not by approvals, but by whether people are receiving the assistance they need,” it said.
The appeal asked Israel to let supplies in every day through every crossing, lift restrictions, allow repairs to water and sewage networks, let all aid groups including Palestinian organisations work, and allow commercial goods in. It urged governments to use their influence and to fund the response. “Winter will last for months,” the team said. “People cannot wait.”
Israel, whose troops control about two-thirds of the territory, has said no reconstruction can begin until Hamas is disarmed.
The UN’s humanitarian office said more than 26,000 households reported damage to their shelters or belongings after the storms. Gaza’s government media office said at least 70,000 tents flooded within hours of the rain starting on 7 November.
