Cold, devastated Gaza braces for more winter rain amid ceasefire doubts

Barefoot children played on chilly sand as Gaza’s thousands of displaced people prepared threadbare tents on Saturday for another round of winter rain.

Some families in the central town of Deir al-Balah said they had been living in tents for about two years, or most of the genocidal Israeli war that has utterly devastated the territory.

Fathers braced fraying tents with old pieces of wood or inspected the ragged edges of holes torn in tarps. Inside the dim homes, daylight through tiny holes shone like stars.

Mothers battled the damp, slinging clothing over poles or cord to dry in the wind between the downpours that turn paths into puddles. One mother pulled a tiny child away from a mildewing patch of carpet.

“We have been living in this tent for two years. Every time it rains and the tent collapses over our heads, we try to put up new pieces of wood,” said Shaima Wadi, a mother of four children who was displaced from Jabaliya in the north. “With how expensive everything has become, and without any income, we can barely afford clothes for our children or mattresses for them to sleep on.”

Gaza’s Health Ministry has said dozens of people, including a two-week-old infant, have died from hypothermia or after weather-related collapses of war-damaged homes.

Aid organizations have called for more shelters and other humanitarian aid to be allowed into the territory as Israel continues to prevent its entry.

Emergency workers have warned people not to stay in damaged buildings. But with so much of the territory reduced to rubble, there are few places to escape the rain.

“I collect nylon, cardboard and plastic from the streets to keep them warm,” said Ahmad Wadi, who burns the materials or uses them as a kind of blanket for loved ones. “They don’t have proper covers. It is freezing, the humidity is high, and water seeps in from everywhere. I don’t know what to do.”

Ceasefire talks

Israel Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is expected to visit Washington in the coming days as negotiators and others discuss the second stage of the ceasefire that took effect on October 10.

Though the agreement has mostly held, its progress has slowed. The remains of the final hostage taken during the Hamas-led attack on October 7, 2023 are still in Gaza.

Challenges in the next phase of the ceasefire include the deployment of an international stabilization force, a technocratic governing body for Gaza and further Israeli troop withdrawals from the territory.

There is also the question of the disarmament of Hamas, which refuses to give up its weapons as long as Israel continues to occupy Palestinian territory.

Israel continues to occupy over 50 percent of Gaza and has continued to kill hundreds of people in the territory despite the truce.

Gaza’s Health Ministry said that since the ceasefire went into effect, 414 Palestinians have been killed and 1,142 wounded. It said the bodies of 679 people were pulled from the rubble during the same period as the truce makes it safer to search for the remains of people killed earlier.

The ministry on Saturday said 29 bodies, including 25 that were recovered from under the rubble, had been brought to local hospitals over the past 48 hours.

The overall Palestinian death toll from the Israeli war has risen to at least 71,266, the ministry said, and another 171,219 have been wounded.