Palestinians have been left to freeze as Winter Storm Byron rips through Gaza, causing flooding as Israel continues blocking crucial winter supplies like shelter from entering the enclave, the UN’s top expert for Palestine has warned.
“Palestinians in Gaza are literally left ALONE, FREEZING and STARVING in the winter storm. I keep asking how we became such monsters, [i]ncapable of stopping this nightmare,” said Francesca Albanese, UN special rapporteur for the occupied Palestinian territories, on X Wednesday. “For them, for us, for whatever remains of the people in whose name this genocide is being committed.”
Albanese quoted a post by international lawyer Itay Epshtain, who said that Israel is violating international law in its obstruction of aid like shelter.
The Norwegian Refugee Council (NRC) said on Wednesday that, in the first two months of the ceasefire agreement, “only a trickle of shelter supplies has entered Gaza.”
“Due to severe restrictions, UN and international aid organisations have only been able to bring in 15,600 tents for 88,000 people, while 1.29 million still need shelter to survive the winter,” the group said. Israel has rejected nearly 4,000 pallets of shelter materials from entering, NRC said.
The group noted that the 850,000 Palestinians at displacement sites are at risk of their shelters being flooded.
Indeed, Byron unleashed torrential rain across Gaza on Thursday, causing widespread flooding and damage to hundreds of tents. Medics told Reuters that one baby, eight-month-old Rahaf Abu Jazar, died of exposure after her family’s tent in Khan Yunis was flooded.
“When we woke up, we found the rain over her and the wind on her, and the girl died of cold suddenly,” said the girl’s mother, Hejar Abu Jazar, weeping and holding Rahaf. “There was nothing wrong with her. Oh, the fire in my heart, the fire in my heart, oh my life.”
Palestinians said they woke up to water pouring into holes in their tents, drenching everything inside.
“We’ve lost faith in everything. I’ve given so many interviews and made appeals. They all come to film our tents and our lives, and the media and everyone else see us crying out, but nothing changes,” one Palestinian in a displacement camp, Nour al-Ghandour, told Al Jazeera on Thursday. “Would anyone accept living in this place? To face winter like this?”
Israel is still blocking most humanitarian aid, including things like shelter, food, and medical equipment, from entering Gaza, in a blatant violation of the ceasefire agreement.
Israel is supposed to allow 600 trucks of aid into Gaza per day under the deal. On Wednesday, U.S. ambassador to the UN Mike Waltz claimed in a post on X that, in fact, aid entry is exceeding that mark. “Since President Trump’s Peace Plan was endorsed by the UN Security Council, over 600 trucks per day are now bringing food, shelter, and medicine are now entering [sic],” he wrote.
However, this claim stands in sharp contrast to the figures collected by Gaza officials, the UN, and even Israel itself.
The Gaza Government Media Office directly refuted Waltz, saying that no more than 234 trucks per day have entered Gaza since the ceasefire began. Waltz’s statement is a “blatant attempt to exonerate the [Israeli] occupation from the crime of the blockade and starving the civilian population,” the office said.
The UN has said that an average of 113 trucks working through the UN network have entered Gaza per day since the ceasefire began, while Israel claims that an average of 459 trucks is entering daily.
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