Gaza's displaced families struggle to survive winter as tents fail and caravans are blocked

In a tent set up in the courtyard of a school being used as a shelter, Umm Qusai, a woman in her forties, sits watching her five children as they share the narrow space around her. Her eldest child is 16, while her youngest is not yet a year old.

Before being displaced from Rafah at the start of the Gaza genocide, she lost two of her children in shelling. From that moment, her life became a continuous journey of displacement, moving from Rafah to Khan Younis, and from one tent to another, until she finally settled where she is now.

"By God, I wish we had a clean caravan. All the tents are dirty, and when it rains, they fly away and tear apart, no matter how much we try to secure them. Water and cold come in on us," Umm Qusai tells The New Arab, describing the daily struggle of living in a tent.

She explains that her children's health issues exacerbate the hardship. Amid frequent panic attacks and the cold weather, she adds bitterly, "They wake up from one illness and fall into another."

The suffering does not stop inside the tent. Sewage pits dug between the tents often leak into the displacement areas, filling the air with suffocating odours and making daily life even harder.

Looking back, Umm Qusai says last winter was the harshest of her life. She recalls the moment when strong winds tore the tent from the ground, causing it to collapse on her. Her hand was broken in the incident, worsening an earlier injury.

Now, as Gazans face another harsh winter, Umm Qusai's fears grow. 

"I have small children, and I don't know where to go with them in this cold," she says. "If only there were a caravan to shelter us."

The human cost of displacement

What Umm Qusai is experiencing is not unusual. Thousands of families living in displacement tents face the same hardships. Some, however, have tried to find a way out of this unfair reality.

Abu Mohammad, a father of five, recounts his story. He says he has been displaced nine times since the start of Israel's genocide, moving between Rafah and the central area with his family.

During the January 2025 truce, he returned to his home and found it still standing, but that stability was short-lived. His house was later damaged by shelling, forcing him to flee again in August to Al-Mawasi in Khan Younis, moving between shelter camps that were themselves later targeted by bombardment.

Describing life in tents, he says, "What we lived through was inhumane — the heat of summer and the cold of winter. We couldn't sleep comfortably for even an hour. We were always thinking, 'What if we die and leave our children behind?' We spent hours removing water from the tent while the children cried from cold and fear."

The situation worsened when his wife fell ill. After repeated failures to rent a house due to widespread destruction, Abu Mohammad faced a difficult choice. Should he give up? Instead, he decided to build an alternative shelter using zinc sheets and tarpaulins.

"It took about two weeks to build and cost more than 8,000 shekels," he says. "It was expensive, but safer than a tent."

He adds, "Allowing residential caravans into Gaza could ease the burden on thousands of exhausted families."

As for Mohammad Skiek, a photojournalist from Gaza, he was forcibly displaced in mid-October 2023 after receiving threats that forced him to leave his home on Al-Nasr Street.

He left with his family carrying nothing, hoping the war would be short. Over the following months, however, they were displaced more than five times, moving between Deir al-Balah, Khan Younis, and Al-Zawayda.

Mohammad says tents offer little protection from winter cold or strong winds. His tent was torn several times, affecting his children, his mental health, and his ability to focus on his work. Despite the prolonged displacement, his family received only three blankets.

"I couldn't sleep at night from constantly checking on my children. I was torn between my journalistic work and my fear of receiving a call from my wife telling me the tent had flown away, and they were left in the street," he tells The New Arab. 

Today, Mohammad and his family live in a small storage room, with a tent added at the entrance to provide a minimum level of privacy. He believes caravans are an urgent and more dignified humanitarian solution.

Abu Mohammad and Mohammad are not alone in trying to escape life in tents. Jaafar, a young man from Gaza who recently got engaged, says resentfully, "Life in tents is for trips only, not for permanent living."

Displaced to the south of the Strip two years ago, he lived in a tent with his mother and younger siblings. As winter approached and protection remained absent, memories of last year's cold tested his patience. He decided to build a safer shelter for his family.

"It's two rooms made of mud, each four-by-four metres. This construction withstands more than tents — at least I can protect my mother and siblings from the cold," he says.

Adding to this, he says he built the home using 8,000 bricks, for $3,500, over ten days, and that, once the mud dries, he and his family will move in, while hoping, one day, to help others build similar homes, despite the lack of financial support, the high cost for displaced people, and the unavailability of cement in Gaza.

In sharing this, he recalls Hamas spokesperson Hazem Qassem's statement on 1 December 2025 that tents are not fit for human habitation, adding that the number of humanitarian aid trucks entering Gaza fails to meet the population's needs amid the ongoing crisis, despite agreements during the January truce and the Sharm el-Sheikh talks to allow the entry of mobile homes.

A forgotten agreement 

According to Adnan Abu Hasna, UNRWA's media adviser, most tents in Gaza are old or made of fabric and plastic, and they are easily torn by rain or strong winds.

UNRWA data indicate that about 1.5 million Palestinians have had their homes destroyed, while around 80,000 displaced people are living inside shelter centres, with hundreds of thousands more living nearby or near destroyed homes.

Adnan says displacement gatherings are concentrated in the Al-Mawasi areas along the coast, from Khan Younis to Gaza City, where tents are extremely overcrowded.

He notes that while tens of thousands of tents entered Gaza after the ceasefire, the need remains for hundreds of thousands, amid ongoing restrictions on adequate entry, and adds that UNRWA warehouses in Jordan and Egypt hold enough tents, blankets, and food supplies to sustain Gaza for three months.

Referring to the conditions described by Umm Qusai and Mohammad, Adnan says, "Infrastructure in Gaza is destroyed. Water is contaminated and unfit for human use. Sewage floods displacement areas — this is the reason for the spread of diseases."

Regarding the delay in allowing caravans to enter Gaza, he comments, "We do not know why Israel is preventing the entry of caravans until now, even though this issue was part of the agreement.”

He adds that UNRWA has no details about the agreed humanitarian protocol. If caravans were allowed in, he says, "They would be dozens of times better than tents and would have a major impact."

Adnan hopes the people of Gaza will receive similar treatment to other regions where caravans were used, such as northern Syria, while stressing the need to prepare infrastructure before bringing in tens of thousands of caravans.

Systematic effort to make life 'unliveable'

Weighing in on the dehumanisation inflicted upon Gazans, Jordanian writer and political analyst Abdel Hakim Al-Qaraleh says that blocking the entry of caravans is part of a systematic effort to make life 'unliveable,' deliberately targeting civilians and infrastructure in clear violation of international humanitarian law and the Fourth Geneva Convention.

He describes the security pretexts used to prevent caravans as "flimsy" and intended to stop any humanitarian stability that might undermine policies of pressure and forced displacement — a strategy he attributes to Israel's far-right wing.

According to Abdel, allowing caravans into Gaza is crucial because they provide much-needed protection. He notes that calls for their entry have come from Jordan, other Arab states, and international bodies aiming to reduce the scale of the humanitarian catastrophe caused by Israel's military operations.

He also highlights that ceasefire agreements were meant to guarantee a sustained flow of humanitarian aid, which has not materialised. He holds the international community — particularly the United States — legally and morally responsible for this failure.

That said, he notes that what should have materialised was outlined in the Gaza deal welcomed by the UN Secretary-General on 8 October last year, which called for a ceasefire, the release of hostages under the Trump plan in Sharm el-Sheikh, and the provision of humanitarian supplies to relieve suffering. Ultimately, the agreement, backed by the United Nations, was intended to give Gazans hope for recovery and reconstruction.

Since the ceasefire, however, conditions on the ground have changed little. In December 2025, UNICEF warned that children were dying in Gaza due to harsh winter conditions, reporting deaths caused by flooding and extreme cold in displacement camps. Despite repeated calls to provide safe shelter, tents remain exposed to wind and rain, leaving families vulnerable.

For example, even people like Abu Mohammad, who have improved their living conditions, still endure the relentless pounding of rain on their roofs — which he compares to gunfire — and the haunting memory of the night when strong winds killed his neighbour's eight-month-old daughter from the cold.

Yet, amid these challenges, Gazan families continue to adapt and innovate, from Umm Qusai's tent and Abu Mohammad's zinc house to Jaafar's mud home and the storage room sheltering a journalist's family, with the newest initiative being a wooden caravan funded by the Medad Palestine Charity, as residents seek better protection.

With this in mind, however, replicating such solutions is hampered by raw material shortages, and even with high hopes pinned on Angelina Jolie's arrival at the Rafah crossing at the start of 2026, families' needs remain unmet, leaving them vulnerable to the cold and wind.

Huda Alhanayfah is an independent investigative journalist from Jordan specialising in human rights and environmental issues. She is the founder of the Kayf? podcast and a member of the Marie Colvin Journalists' Network. She previously worked at ARIJ and Free Press Unlimited, and has received several local journalism awards