The ghoulish Israelis have been deliberately pushing Palestinians towards another catastrophic winter.
ALL the warnings issued by the Gaza authorities and numerous humanitarian organisations over the past few months in anticipation of winter came to fruition when the first rains hit Gaza on Saturday morning, submerging thousands of tents, collapsing dozens of structures, and displacing yet more people as genocide survivors endure another Israeli-engineered calamity in the fourth year of the ongoing genocide.
“Within just 12 hours of the arrival of the first low-pressure weather system, 70,000 tents sheltering tens of thousands of displaced people have been flooded,” the Gaza Government Media Office said in a statement on Saturday.
“In addition, dozens of walls have collapsed, resulting in numerous injuries, including serious injuries, across different governorates of the Gaza Strip.”
Gaza Civil Defence said that it had received more than 1,500 distress calls from residents whose tents and temporary shelters had been damaged across all the governorates of the Gaza Strip.
Entire displacement camps across various areas and cities throughout the Gaza Strip had been flooded since dawn on Saturday, it added.
Gaza Civil Defence also highlighted its severe shortage of resources following three years of nonstop Israeli genocidal assault, saying it was unable to cope with the impact of changing weather conditions and the scale of the resulting disaster. It added that it lacked essential resources, including the equipment needed to pump out rainwater that had accumulated in flooded areas.
Social media was flooded with videos showing Palestinians struggling to clear their tents of floodwater mixed with sewage as their few remaining belongings were submerged in the deluge. With temperatures dropping, they also struggled to find a dry place to sleep.
This catastrophe has just begun, and there is every possibility that the scale of suffering will escalate as the weather worsens and Palestinians, bereft of adequate shelter and nutrition, are exposed to the elements.
Dozens of infants froze to death during the previous three winters of the ongoing genocide.
For several months now, the authorities in Gaza have warned that hundreds of buildings are on the brink of collapse and that they would become even more vulnerable after the rains. In August, the media office said that more than 867,000 Palestinians were “living in rudimentary and dilapidated tents that are no longer fit for shelter.” It emphasised that providing safe shelter had become an urgent necessity to protect children, the elderly, the sick, and the most vulnerable groups from the risks of cold and disease.
Those warnings have come to pass.
There are fears of further building collapses, endangering the lives of people residing in and around such structures. “We also warn of the potential collapse of dozens of damaged buildings that are structurally unsound and at risk of falling down, having been damaged by bombardment during the genocidal war on the Gaza Strip, which has continued for three consecutive years,” the Gaza Government Media Office said.
It estimated the direct losses resulting from the onset of winter at approximately $3 million so far.
The Israelis occupied 53 percent of the Gaza Strip at the start of the “ceasefire” in October 2025. They have since moved further westwards to occupy around 70 percent of Palestinian territory, pushing Palestinians into ever-shrinking spaces.
In addition to expanding their occupation, the Israelis have continuously bombarded genocide survivors, killing more than 1,600 Palestinians and injuring around 6,000 others. Further, their Gaza blockade, which has prevented the entry of food and other essentials in sufficient quantities, has brought the residents to the brink of another famine, as they struggle to secure meals.
Moreover, the ghoulish Israelis have been deliberately pushing Palestinians towards another catastrophic winter. Last month, a report revealed that the Israelis had classified tents, tarpaulins, timber, cement, tools, rope, duct tape and other materials used to build tents or repair shelters as “dual-use items” — that is, items that could potentially be used as weapons — and were allowing only 15 trucks a week carrying such materials to enter the Gaza Strip. More than 500 truckloads of Israeli-designated dual-use shelter materials were struck because the Jewish state did not allow their entry into the besieged enclave.
Thus, entirely by Israeli design, the rains have become another calamity for Palestinians to endure.
“The rain is innocent. It is not the rain that has caused us this suffering,” Gaza resident Ahmed Nashwan wrote on Twitter.
“This vast, powerful and resourceful world has abandoned its responsibility to rescue and shelter hundreds of thousands of Palestinians who have endured the most horrific crimes of genocide for more than three years.
“The tents of Gaza were not drowned by winter, but by the clouds of abandonment.” — Palestine Will Be Free
