Aid agencies have reiterated calls for Israel to allow more tents and urgently needed supplies into Gaza after the first heavy winter rainfall, saying more than a quarter of a million families need emergency help with shelters.
We are going to lose lives this winter. Children, families will perish, says Jan Egeland, Secretary General of the Norwegian Refugee Council (NRC).
With a majority of the population displaced by two years of a devastating war, most Gazans now live in tents - many of them makeshift. They have been clearing up after widespread flooding due to a winter storm that began on Friday.
There are fears that diseases could spread as rainwater has mixed with sewage water. My children are already sick and look at what happened to our tent, said Fatima Hamdona, crying in the rain over the weekend, as she showed a BBC freelance journalist the ankle-deep puddle inside her temporary home in Gaza City.
According to the NRC - which has long led the so-called Shelter Cluster in Gaza, made up of some 20 non-governmental organisations (NGOs) - about 260,000 Palestinian families, or about 1.5 million people, are in need of emergency shelter assistance, lacking the basics to get through winter.
They say they have been able to get only about 19,000 tents into Gaza since the US-brokered Israel-Hamas ceasefire took effect on 10 October. Jan Egeland blames what he calls a bureaucratic, military, politicised quagmire running counter to all humanitarian principles for the hold-up.
Many items, including tent poles, are also classed as dual-use by Israel, meaning they have a military as well as civilian purpose, and their entry is banned or heavily restricted.
International aid groups are hoping that a new US-led coordination center designed to ease the flow of humanitarian aid will help alleviate restrictions and ensure that necessary supplies reach those in desperate need.
Palestinians have voiced concerns about the effectiveness of current aid distribution, noting that many tents provided by international agencies have been stolen and sold in local black markets. We pray for this war to be fully over, and for everyone to return to their homes, said Rami Deif Allah, a displaced resident in Gaza City.
