After two years of war and widespread destruction, more than a million Palestinians in Gaza continue to live in temporary shelters, many of which cannot withstand rain and flooding. Against the backdrop of a U.S.-backed cease-fire, Israeli authorities spent months restricting the entry of tents, support structures and other housing materials, classifying some of them as “dual-use” goods. Closed crossings and reduced humanitarian corridors have delayed the restoration of water and sewage systems, already leading to outbreaks of disease and a growing shortage of safe conditions. Winter is forecast to bring above-normal rainfall, strong winds and storms—just as families in Gaza are living exposed on flood-prone ground, without reliable protection or access to basic assistance.
A severe shortage of tents and other shelter materials is leaving more than a million Palestinians in Gaza unprotected against winter cold and the risk of disease. In response, the U.N. and humanitarian organizations are urgently restoring stormwater infrastructure and repairing thousands of temporary homes damaged or destroyed by recent rains.
For months, Israeli authorities fully or partially restricted deliveries of key shelter materials—tents, support structures, tools and tarps—despite the U.S.-backed cease-fire that took effect last month and obliges Israel to ensure unhindered access for humanitarian aid.
Destruction in Gaza after an Israeli strike on November 20, 2025.
The Israeli side maintains that humanitarian cargo volumes are not being restricted and places responsibility for the shortages on the U.N., arguing that the organization is not collecting or distributing supplies properly. “Over the past few months, in preparation for winter and to shield people from the rains, COGAT coordinated with international bodies and sent nearly 140,000 tents to residents of the Gaza Strip,” the Israeli Defense Ministry unit responsible for humanitarian affairs said in a statement. “We are planning a targeted humanitarian response for the coming winter.”
According to U.N. officials, Israel classified part of the humanitarian goods, including tent poles, as “dual-use” items, arguing they could be employed by armed groups to produce weapons or other equipment. In addition, the authorities barred several humanitarian organizations from importing tents, allowing shelter materials to be supplied only by select donor states. Yet, as Sheyna Low of the Norwegian Refugee Council notes, some of these materials are not waterproof and are insufficiently durable for winter conditions.
At the same time, Israeli restrictions—including the continued closure of the Rafah border crossing and the suspension of all but two humanitarian corridors inside Gaza—have stalled urgently needed repairs to damaged water and sewage systems. Humanitarian experts warn that these networks could collapse or fail in the next storm.
Displaced Palestinian children search for anything that could be used as fuel for cooking at the Bureij refugee camp. November 23, 2025.
A recent downpour sent a surge of partially contaminated water coursing through the streets, flooding camps, tents and partially destroyed homes. According to the U.N. Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, the impact affected more than 740,000 people. The agency said the flooding “destroyed the few remaining shelters and belongings that thousands of Palestinians in Gaza still had.”
“Children in Gaza are sleeping directly on the ground without any shelter, in light shorts and T-shirts soaked with sewage after their tents were flooded over the weekend due to heavy rains, creating a risk of disease,” the international organization Save the Children said in a statement.
According to the World Health Organization, the combination of severe weather and exposure to hazardous waste could lead to even greater suffering and disease outbreaks in Gaza, as Palestinians try to reclaim even a semblance of normal life after two years of war.
The forecast for this winter points to above-average rainfall, strong winds and coastal storms “in conditions where wastewater reservoirs are already overflowing, half a million tons of waste remain uncollected… and fragile tents are pitched directly on open, flood-prone ground,” the WHO’s 39-page report published this month says. The document cites climate analysis and weather projections prepared by SARI Global, a risk assessment firm.
Yarin Abu al-Naja, 44, already understands the hardships the storms may bring. Earlier this month, when up to three inches of rain fell on Gaza in a short span, the many holes in her dilapidated shelter “felt like blows straight to the heart,” she said.
Dirty water burst into part of her temporary dwelling in Mawasi, in southern Gaza—a densely populated stretch of sandy coastline that Israeli forces once declared a “safe zone” during the war. On the night of November 13, she spent hours holding a plastic bucket over the heads of her mother and young son.
“The war is over, but our wounds are not,” she wrote in a WhatsApp message. “A new war has begun, a psychological war of oppression and humiliation.”
Palestinians collect water in containers at a distribution point in Nuseirat. November 23, 2025.
With the start of the cease-fire on October 10, Israel sharply reduced its military activity in Gaza, yet its forces continue to control more than half of the territory. Since then, more than 300 Palestinians have been killed by Israeli strikes, shelling and gunfire, according to Gaza’s Health Ministry.
For most residents, there has been no meaningful improvement. Food deliveries to the enclave did increase after a leading global hunger organization confirmed famine in Gaza City in August. However, the World Food Programme notes that diets remain extremely limited: vegetables, fruit and sources of protein are still out of reach for many families.
According to OCHA, citing the World Food Programme, Israeli authorities at border crossings are prioritizing commercial cargo, while U.N. and other humanitarian consignments are pushed aside. Commercial goods, it notes, often consist of “high-cost, low-nutritional-value products, such as soft drinks and chocolate.” On Saturday, the U.N. said, Israeli forces denied all three of its missions to collect tents, food and other supplies from the Kerem Shalom crossing in southern Gaza. According to an internal U.N. dashboard tracking aid delivered jointly with partners, shelter materials have accounted for about 8 percent of the total weight of humanitarian supplies that have entered the enclave since October 10.
“A lot remains the same as after the cease-fire,” said a U.N. staff member familiar with the current restrictions, speaking on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss the situation publicly. “We’re still having issues bringing in shelter materials… because of these bureaucratic and administrative bottlenecks.”
Meanwhile, most Gaza residents are forced to live in areas highly exposed to weather risks and deprived of functioning infrastructure. The WHO estimates that this is driving a rise in infectious diseases and respiratory illnesses among severely weakened people who are especially vulnerable to infection.
In Mawasi, Abu al-Naja says her nine-year-old son Ahmed divides his time between hours-long lines for water and food and studying in a dusty makeshift classroom with 60 other children. She lives in constant fear that he will fall ill.
This month, the U.N. and Gaza’s Health Ministry launched the first phase of a “catch-up” vaccination program for children who missed routine immunizations because of the war. In the initial stage, more than 13,000 children were vaccinated against measles, mumps, tetanus, whooping cough, polio, rotavirus, pneumonia and other diseases. Medical teams also screened children for signs of wasting: of 6,827 examined, 508 were diagnosed with acute malnutrition, the U.N. Children’s Fund reported. In addition, according to the U.N., October saw 9,200 new cases of acute malnutrition among 110,000 screened children—slightly fewer than 11,700 in September and 14,400 in August.
Mohsen Radi, 35, said his two-year-old son Mohammed was among those vaccinated. Radi lives with his wife and three children, including Mohammed, in a tent in the Rimal area of Gaza City. He said that after recent rains the shelter sagged, leaving all of his belongings—blankets, pillows, clothing, kitchen items—underwater. The family last received food assistance last month, when the WFP provided them with a package of staples. Radi does not know whether their home in Israeli-controlled territory still stands. For now, the family sustains itself on a single bowl of thin lentil soup a day to keep from freezing.
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About 15 miles to the south, in Khan Younis, 48-year-old Baha Shurrab endured yet another sleepless night in the cold and spoke of bleak prospects. He lives in a structure made of a tent, a cement wall and thin carpets spread across the sandy ground. Insects and garbage, he says, are everywhere around him. Days in Gaza are still relatively warm, but at night the temperature drops, and the cold forces Shurrab awake. He has no winter clothing and does not know how he might obtain any. Each morning he wakes to pray and search for paper or plastic to fuel a fire on a small stove.
For now, Shurrab survives on lentils, which he calls his “most faithful friend” because they are always available, and on canned food that, he says, is “not fit for humans.” “There’s nothing left to mourn,” he said.