Tents in winter: Dislocated by war, Gazans struggle to find shelter

From her tent in Rafah, Mirvat Alsaid learned the fate of her Gaza City home.

Watching an Al Jazeera broadcast from northern Gaza City on her phone two weeks ago, she recognized the neighborhood and the very street where her family’s Al Malish No. 9 apartment building once stood.

The camera panned to its location, revealing a pile of concrete and steel. The family’s home had been reduced to ruins by an Israeli missile. They had five years left on the 12-year loan they took to buy the apartment.

Now she and her nine children and grandchildren share a makeshift nylon tarp tent on a dusty patch in Rafah that is “cold, dry, and unwelcoming.” The winter storms “hit us harshly, especially at night,” says Ms. Alsaid. Her daughter Majd has fallen ill with a severe cough, fever, and fatigue.

After being displaced nine times in less than 100 days, Ms. Alsaid cannot imagine relocating once again.

As panic grips Rafah over Israel’s declared plans for a military offensive against Hamas in the southern city, the Alsaid family and tens of thousands like them have nowhere left to go. Tired, wary, ill, and broke, they say they cannot make the journey, even if they had safe passage to shelter in a new destination.

“I hope this is the last time I pack my tent,” Ms. Alsaid says. “I am so tired.”

With more than 75% of the 2.2 million Palestinians in Gaza displaced and the Israeli military offensive having damaged or destroyed 60% of housing in the besieged enclave, according to the United Nations, shelter has become the top, urgent need for Gaza residents.  

As families struggle with a lack of tents and winter clothing, the prospect of a homeless postwar future looms over their battle to survive in the present.

Tent economy

The U.N. estimates, as of press time, that a minimum of 650,000 Gaza residents, nearly one-third of the population, would have no home to return to should the Israel-Hamas war end today. 

Around 100,000 families across Gaza are in need of immediate shelter support, particularly winter tents, the U.N. said this week.

The U.N.’s Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs said Monday that 28,000 tents are in the pipeline to be delivered to Gaza. But it remains unclear when they will arrive, how they will be distributed, and if they could reach families should an Israeli military operation commence in Rafah, the entry point for international aid.

The few standing apartment units available to rent – a rapidly decreasing commodity in Gaza – go for a minimum of $1,500 a month for 120 square meters, 10 times the prewar rate.

Waterproof tents donated by Qatar, the United Arab Emirates, and other countries are a prized possession.

Yet many of the fortunate few who receive these tents are forced to sell them for cash to pay for food, wood for cooking, and medicine. Once sold, the donated tents are hard to buy back.

At the market in Deir al-Balah, the central Gaza town that has become the second-largest evacuee epicenter, venders this week sold these donated waterproof tents for $2,000-$2,500 each. The price is rising week on week as the number of displaced people rises.

With each displacement, Gaza families are fleeing with less and less, leaving behind the last of their earthly possessions and using up their final reserves of cash.

Dalia Nahhal, a mother of four and Gaza City native, has evacuated six times following Israeli military orders. She’s escaped encroaching Israeli artillery shells and airstrikes from Gaza City to Deir al-Balah to Khan Yunis, and finally to Rafah, where she is sharing a room with other families at the home of a distant relative.

Along the way, airstrikes destroyed her home and her car, and killed several family members.

In one hurried 1 a.m. evacuation from a Gaza neighborhood amid missile strikes, she forgot to take most of their belongings, grabbing only some light clothes for her and her children. 

“Every moment I wonder: What more I will lose? I lost my house, my memories, the sense of safety,” Ms. Nahhal says. “The feelings of displacement and anxiety never go away; it is difficult to sleep. The nightmares haunt us night and day.

“I fear a ground invasion,” she confides. “I don’t know where to go.”

Urgent Facebook appeals

Many Palestinians uprooted by recent Israeli offensives on Khan Yunis, a previously designated safe zone, are arriving in Rafah with nothing, and are finding no shelter. Even to assemble a tent, families need cash to buy used animal feed bags, tarps, and wood. 

Many resort to appeals on social media for tents and clothes from fellow Gazans.

On Facebook, mother Hanan Khashan wrote, “I need a tent for my family in Rafah. Who can help me in this matter? They have children and the situation is difficult.”

Days later she updated her post: “Thank you to the brave and kind people in Gaza. We have been helped.”

In the Facebook group Deir al-Balah Now, an anonymous poster from Gaza City who had been displaced from Khan Yunis wrote, “To the people of Rafah, I need someone to help us. Two days ago, the Red Crescent [hospital] was bombed overhead and we were injured and displaced to Rafah.

“We are currently in the streets, sleeping on sand, not even in a tent. We cannot find anyone to help us. We have no food or clothes to keep warm. I swear we are so tired.”

The few standing physical evacuee centers are overflowing.

Ruwaida al-Banna, her husband, two daughters, son, daughter-in-law, and grandchildren live in a small makeshift tent of nylon plastic sheets hung with rope, set among disused heavy machinery at a cramped vocational training center-turned-shelter in Deir al-Balah.

It is their fourth location since they left their Gaza City home in October, heeding Israeli military orders.

They share the center with 2,000 other people. There are long waits for water and to use the bathroom.

Even inside the center, there is a cold, damp chill. Ms. Banna wraps in her prayer rug for warmth; her husband curls atop a blanket on the bare floor.

“We spend our nights on the cold ground and our days in anxiety and uncertainty,” she says.

“Sabra, Rimal, Jalaa, Tal Hawa, Zaytoun, Shujaiya,” Samer, her son, rattles off the name of Gaza City’s neighborhoods. “All the Gaza neighborhoods have been destroyed. The impact is everywhere.”

Even when families in Gaza secure shelter and there is no immediate threat of a missile strike or an Israeli military ground invasion, unanswerable questions linger.

“Even if the war ends now, we have lost our homes and belongings,” says Ms. Nahhal from Rafah. “My family’s house is gone; all my friends have lost their homes, too. Even if we can return to Gaza City, where will we go?”