As temperatures drop and seasonal rains flood fragile settlements in the Gaza Strip this winter, aid agencies fear many Palestinians will die while others become critically ill and some permanently disabled.
“It is very cold. It has been raining overnight. … We are anticipating very heavy rain here today, and this is while 1.9 million people are displaced,” Louise Wateridge, senior emergency officer for UNRWA — the U.N. Relief and Works Agency for Palestinian Refugees — told journalists in Geneva Friday from the Nuseirat refugee camp in central Gaza.
Nuseirat, one of Gaza’s eight historical refugee camps established in 1948, came under Israeli fire last week, killing more than 30 Palestinians and injuring dozens of others.
“Palestinians do not have access to adequate shelter; 69% of buildings have been damaged or destroyed across the Gaza Strip,” Wateridge said.
Although many people will lack shelter capable of protecting them from the winter cold and rain, she said, “we have had to prioritize food over shelter entering the Gaza Strip.”
Wateridge explained that essential relief supplies have been sitting in trucks “outside the Gaza Strip waiting to enter for the past six months.”
The UNRWA official also observed that the widespread damage and destruction of buildings throughout Gaza has left Palestinian families unprotected from Israel’s relentless airstrikes.
“We are hearing from doctors that children are getting injuries from shrapnel from strikes over a kilometer away from where the strikes hit, because there is nothing but tents and fabrics to protect them from any bombs and any bullets,” she said.
Wateridge said that some of the most wrenching scenes she has witnessed “are seeing toddlers in hospitals missing limbs after strikes … and seeing children searching through piles of trash for scraps of food or materials for shelter.”
Rosalia Bollen, UNICEF’s communication specialist in Gaza, who has spent the past three months in the Palestinian enclave, warns that hunger, malnutrition and dire living conditions are putting the lives of children at risk.
Speaking on a video link from Amman, Jordan, on Friday, Bollen said that more than 96% of women and children in Gaza cannot meet their basic nutritional needs.
“Most are surviving on rations of flour, pasta, lentils, can food at best … a diet that is slowly compromising their health,” she said, noting that healthier food is not available in Gaza because only 65 truckloads of aid daily were entering Gaza, compared with 500 trucks that entered daily before the war.
“Virtually all children under 2 in Gaza consume from two food groups at best. This is very, very dangerous because young children who grow rapidly need access to nutritious food … otherwise, they are at risk of wasting or stunting.
“The consequences of that are lifelong. Children do not recover from that later on,” she said, emphasizing the suffering is physical and psychological. “Children are sick, tired and traumatized.”
She said conditions for children are particularly bad in northern Gaza, which has been under “a near total siege for 75 days now.”
“Gaza must be one of the most heartbreaking places for us humanitarians to work in, because every small effort we make to save a child’s life is undone by devastation,” she said. “For over 14 months, children have been at the sharp edge of this nightmare, with more than 14,500 children reportedly killed and thousands more injured.”
The Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, or OCHA, UNICEF, UNRWA and other U.N. agencies carried out an assessment Thursday at four sites hosting some 1,600 families who had arrived from North Gaza since the Israeli siege began nearly 11 weeks ago.
“Families are packed into tents or damaged buildings with no electricity,” OCHA said.
“People sheltering at these sites lack the most basic items, including shoes, clothing, mattresses, blankets and kitchen supplies. They also reported a shortage of medicines, with diseases spreading rapidly due to the cold.”
UNICEF’s Bollen noted that the onset of winter in Gaza has inflicted additional pain and suffering upon children badly in need of aid that could alleviate their misery.
“Children are cold. They are wet. They are barefoot. I see many children who still wear summer clothes, and with cooking gas gone, there also are lots of children I see scavenging through piles of garbage looking for plastic they can burn. Diseases are meanwhile ravaging their little bodies, while hospitals are destitute and constantly attacked,” she said.
“As many of us head into the celebrations of Christmas and New Year surrounded by so much, let us take a moment to think of these children who have so little and yet continue to lose more day by day.
“Every day without action steals another day from Gaza’s children. … Gaza’s children cannot wait,” Bollen said.
