The Flood of Gaza

My friend, a displaced person from Rafah in the vicinity of Khan Younis, tells me: "I was trying to lift the edge of the tent to let the water out instead of gathering inside it, but the tent was too weak to withstand. The mattress was soaked, the blankets stuck to the mud, and the children woke up terrified and wet, their fear of water greater than their fear of airplanes. At that moment, I said: Where do I move them? From one tent to another? The war hasn’t ended, and its curtain hasn’t fallen, and there are still people announcing victory! I was speaking on behalf of thousands of fathers, not just my family alone. This is a personal testimony, but today it is a collective narrative." As the genocide war enters its third year, Gaza has turned into a completely devastated area. There is no infrastructure left, no electricity, no clean water, no roads, no sewage. The war didn't just destroy the stone, but destroyed the very conditions of life. Millions of Palestinians have been forced to flee, some for the second or third time. The tents that were a symbol of temporary refuge have now become permanent shelters, but they are tents without floors, walls, or roofs to protect from rain, wind, or mud. Thousands of children sleep on wet ground, women struggle to maintain what remains of their privacy, and men fail to protect their families, not because they don't want to, but because what they possess is no longer worth anything compared to the magnitude of the disaster. The collapse of infrastructure, the absence of drainage networks, the tightening of the siege, and the freezing of reconstruction efforts are all factors that continue to turn the displacement camps into recurring scenes of loss and humiliation. With the arrival of the low-pressure system "Biron", everything turned into a more severe phase. The heavy rains turned the ground into a sea of mud, the roads into stagnant pools, and the tents into containers collecting water instead of repelling it. The winds tore through the tents as if they were silent shells. Dozens of tents collapsed during the night, and hundreds were completely submerged. These are not just numbers or a technical description of the weather situation, but it was a night that served as a lesson in what it means to be a helpless father in the face of the storm. When the rain intensified, I moved inside the tent trying to protect the children from water seepage. I lifted a mattress here, covered a gap there, and searched for any extra piece of cloth that might prevent the wind from coming in. I felt like I was dealing with a living nightmare. What hurts the most is that the father is no longer able to perform the simplest function: providing a roof that won't fall on his family's heads. As the rain turned the ground around the camp into a sticky mud that drowned feet, one thought crossed my mind: How can the world discuss safe passages and post-war plans while no one can take responsibility for a single unsafe tent? Does the international community need a scene of children drowning inside their tent to believe that the siege is not just a security measure, but a systematic policy to starve Palestinians and strip them of the simplest tools of survival? The United Nations estimates that more than two-thirds of the displaced live in tents without insulating floors, without drainage networks, and without protection from flash floods. Another part lives on the rubble of their homes, because for them, the rubble is better off than the tent. And with ongoing Israeli restrictions preventing the entry of suitable tents and housing materials and blankets, a single wave of rain turns into a complete humanitarian disaster, a direct threat to life, not only due to drowning but also because of diseases spreading in stagnant water, mud, and exposed sewage. What is happening today is not just a plight of the displaced, but a direct result of a systematic policy: destroying homes, then preventing their reconstruction; displacing populations, then prohibiting the entry of what could protect them from the winter chill; creating a crisis, then managing the global discussion on how to handle it. Some want these tents to remain because they justify the continuation of the war, and some would prefer to see the Palestinian as just a number without a name, no home, and no memory, to make talking about him easier than talking to him. Yet, the tents that are shaking today under the rain carry within them stories that neither the weather nor the war can erase. There is a father trying to hide his fear so it doesn't transfer to his children, a mother struggling through the night to dry the water from blankets that have become more precious than gold, and children waking up from the cold but not crying, because crying in the tent is a luxury that changes nothing. As everyone tries to survive the low-pressure system, the bigger question remains hovering above our heads: How long will Palestinians continue to live in a tent? And how long will the world remain content watching the tent burn, collapse, or drown? It seems that history is tragically repeating itself multiple times with the Palestinians since the Nakba, and the refugee tents and their living conditions have not changed. This moment requires more than solidarity and less than political statements. It requires the immediate opening of safe passages, the entry of housing materials unconditionally, and the lifting of the siege that has turned the weather into an existential threat. The dangers looming in the hours and days ahead are not fate, but a direct result of an ongoing war and deliberate policies. Until then, the Palestinian displaced will continue to live between rain that doubles their pain, a war that doesn’t want to end, and a world that prefers to talk about them instead of saving them. As for us, we will continue to carry the tent in one hand, our children in the other, and try to convince ourselves that this storm will pass, even though we know deep down that what will not pass is the genocide that has made the tent our forced destiny for the third consecutive year.