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Photos:
Tents in Gaza, 11/24/2024. Published by IMEMC News

A tent camp of Palestinian refugees in the central Gaza Strip, on Sunday. Credit: AFP/BASHAR TALEB. Published by Haaretz
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by IMEMC News
On Sunday, November 24, day 415 of the ongoing Israeli assault on the entire population of 2.2 million people in the Gaza Strip, Israeli occupation forces continued their aggression with multiple attacks in several parts of Gaza.

Update: Nov. 24, 2024 11:59 pm Gaza report:

Tents housing thousands of displaced people in several areas of the Gaza Strip were severely damaged on Sunday after rainwater flooded them, damaging and destroying the belongings of the people, and the mattresses that people had been sleeping on.

Rescue teams explained that the areas where the tents of the displaced were damaged were concentrated in: the Yarmouk Stadium shelter camp, the Gaza Municipality Park, the Beach Camp area, and the tents set up in some schools, as well as in the middle and south of the Strip in Wadi al-Dumaitha in al-Qarara, the Wadi al-Salqa area, the vicinity of the Al-Amal neighborhood pond, the Al-Aqsa University campus, the Al-Shakoush area in Mawasi Rafah, and the Al-Birka and the sea coast area in Deir al-Balah.

The teams warned of the serious repercussions that would affect the lives of the displaced, if the low-lying areas were to be flooded with rainwater, in light of the blockage of sewage channels, due to the Israeli occupation army’s destruction of the infrastructure, and the fear also of the collapse of homes and buildings in which Palestinians are displaced, which are unfit for habitation and are at risk of collapse, due to their exposure to the continuous Israeli occupation bombing.

The teams called on the international community to save the lives of the displaced people in the camps in the Gaza Strip before it is too late, and to help them and provide them with tents and caravans to protect them from the damage of winter.

The United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA) confirmed that the flour and food supplies allowed by the Israeli occupation through the crossings do not meet 6% of the population’s needs, which has caused a severe crisis in supplies of bread and other food, which led to the closure of most bakeries in the southern Gaza Strip.

UNRWA explained that more than two million displaced people in the Gaza Strip are besieged by hunger, thirst, disease and fear, and that obtaining meals has become an impossible task for families in the Strip.

Updated from Nov. 24, 2024 12:15 pm Gaza report:

The Israeli occupation forces continued their aggression and genocide crimes in the northern Gaza Strip, for the fifty-first consecutive day, bombing homes and infrastructure, and imposing a tight siege that prevents medicine, food and water, to force citizens to flee south.

The aggression on the northern governorate has left more than 2,000 killed over the past 51 days, hundreds of wounded and detained, and the displacement of more than half of its population of about 200,000 citizens, amid catastrophic humanitarian conditions, and the destruction of entire residential neighborhoods.

In recent weeks, the occupation forces have forced tens of thousands of citizens to flee from the northern governorate to Gaza City, in an occupation attempt to establish a buffer zone.

About 80,000 people who remained in their homes or the buildings they were displaced to in northern Gaza are suffering from tragic conditions, as a result of the intensive raids and fire from vehicles and drones.

Despite the displacement of tens of thousands from the northern Gaza Strip, many residents still refuse to leave their homes, and live daily scenes of destruction and devastation, with the humanitarian situation worsening under the tight siege, continuous bombing, scarcity of food and medicine, and the lack of any rescue teams.

Famine has worsened in most areas of the Gaza Strip as a result of the ongoing occupation siege, especially in the north, following the persistence of genocide and starvation, coinciding with the arrival of winter for the second consecutive year for about two million displaced Palestinians, most of whom are sleeping in tents.

Citizens in Gaza are also suffering from a policy of starvation due to a shortage of food supplies, because the occupation is obstructing the entry of humanitarian aid into the Strip, according to the confirmations of many international and UN institutions.

The international community is calling on Israel to facilitate the entry of humanitarian aid into Gaza, to prevent famine, but to no avail.

Also Sunday, Abu Obeida, spokesperson for the al-Qassam Brigades, the armed wing of the Hamas party, confirmed that after weeks of lost communication, contact was reestablished with fighters guarding Israeli prisoners. According to Obeida, one Israeli female prisoner was killed in an area under intense Israeli attack in northern Gaza.

The Israeli occupation forces continue their aggression on the Gaza Strip, by land, sea and air, since October 7, 2023, which resulted in the killing of 44,176 citizens, the majority of whom are women and children, and the injury of 104,473 others, in an incomplete toll, as thousands of victims are still under the rubble and on the roads, and ambulance and rescue crews cannot reach them.
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Gaza Tents Flooded With Rain, Waste, Destroying the Little Palestinian Refugees Have Left

The recent weather has intensified the distress across the Gaza Strip, with the tents of some two million refugees flooding from either rainwater or sewage. 'It can be summed up in two words: despair and catastrophe,' a Gaza resident told Haaretz

by Jack Khoury for Haaretz
Nov 25, 2024 6:45 pm IST

Dalal, a mother of ten living in a tent in the Al-Mawasi humanitarian zone near the southern Gaza city of Khan Yunis, is doing her best to shelter her children from the pouring rain. Everything is essential to her, from a rainproof tent to shoes for her children.

The family is walking around barefoot in the cold rain as mud spreads around them. "We can't get anything," she says in tears. "We have no money to buy shoes. I'm trying to improvise from some fabric, or we share the same shoe for several days in the hope that the rain won't last long."

Elsewhere in Gaza, near the shoreline, a helpless woman stands. The wind tear apart her tent. "I'm left with nothing, even my improvised tent is destroyed," she says. "What should I do in this situation? I look at my children, call to heaven and say, 'Good, enough. It's better to die from a missile.'"

The recent weather has added to the distress in the Strip, with tents flooding from either rainwater or sewage due to the damaged infrastructure. At this time last year, there were numerous reports of distress caused by rain leaking into homes and tents. But these were the early days of the war, and the number of displaced Palestinians was much smaller.

The situation this year is far worse, with growing distress among the population. More than two million Palestinians across Gaza are now living in destroyed homes or in tents that offer no real shelter for the displaced refugees.

On Sunday, rescue services in Gaza appealed to aid organizations and the international community for immediate aid, including a request for tents and mobile homes for hundreds of many thousands of refugees. The appeal noted that the flooding is causing heavy damage, destroying personal belongings and bedding.

According to the appeal, Gaza is facing a humanitarian catastrophe if displaced Palestinians continue to live under these harsh conditions, particularly in the overcrowded tent camps. The tents provided at the start of the war are no longer adequate to protect the growing numbers of people from the worsening weather, it added.

Gaza Municipality spokesperson Asim Al-Nabih also released a statement in which he listed the scale of the damage and the urgent need for a response in view of the devastated infrastructure and damage to the sewage and rainwater drainage systems in Gaza City.

According to Al-Nabih, more than 175,000 meters (approximately 1.88 million square feet) of sewage pipes, 15,000 meters (about 161,460 square feet) of rainwater drainage pipes, and 105,000 meters (around 1.13 million square feet) of water pipes have been destroyed since the war began. The situation is likely even worse in other areas across the Strip.

Al-Nabih emphasized the urgent need for pipelines and maintenance tools to repair Gaza City's drainage system. However, the Gaza municipality and other partially functioning local councils acknowledge that infrastructure repairs are futile as long as the war continues. It remains unclear who will be able to address this growing crisis.

"We're in one major chaotic situation," told Haaretz a Gaza resident who used to work for a human rights organization in the Strip.

"A regime of militias and clans is emerging in Gaza. Hamas is still present in some locations, but none of these groups can bring any equipment into Gaza, let alone advance an infrastructure project as long as the sovereign is the Israeli army," he said.

"We have no idea what will happen. The only thing we see is destruction and devastation, disease and death, and now we also have to cope with winter and rain. It can be summed up in two words: despair and catastrophe."

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