KHAN YOUNIS, Gaza. A torrential downpour lashed Gaza on the night of December 10 and into the next morning. Eight-month-old Rahaf Abu Jazar and her family had been displaced from their home by Israel’s relentless assault. Now they’d been forced to shelter in a flimsy tent that was no match for the fierce winds, battering rain, and flash flooding of what was called "Storm Byron."

Rahaf’s mother, Hejar Abu Jazar, did everything she could to protect her. “It was raining, fiercely cold, and I had very little to keep her warm,” Hejar told Al Jazeera. “I fed her and put her to sleep. I wrapped her up the best I could, but it wasn’t enough. It kept raining, and the cold was getting worse. I was panicking all night, as the cold kept creeping in.” Early in the morning, “suddenly, I found my little baby motionless, dead.”

By 5 a.m., their tent was flooded and bitter cold. Rahaf had died from exposure. "There was nothing wrong with her. Oh, the fire in my heart, the fire in my heart, oh my life," Hejar Abu Jazar said through bitter tears.

Hundreds of Thousands of Palestinians at Risk

Rahaf’s family wasn’t the only one in this dire, outrageous situation. A U.N. report said over 760 sites, where 850,000 displaced Palestinians are sheltering, were at high risk of flooding. At this writing, thousands have been flooded or forced to evacuate, including entire displacement camps in Khan Yunis, the Shati camp in Gaza City, and Deir al-Balah and Nuseirat in central Gaza. 

“Videos shared online show desperate parents clutching tent poles as the fabric rips under the storm's pressure,” Haaretz reports, “with children crying from the cold as water pours onto their blankets and mattresses. In some camps, residents stood ankle-deep in muddy water, trying to salvage the few belongings they had managed to hold onto amid months of displacement.”

At one tent encampment in Khan Younis, men were using shovels to remove water and dirt blocking access to shelters, as others used sandbags to protect the tents against the elements. With cooking gas very expensive, and often damp firewood difficult to light, keeping warm is a near impossible battle. 

"Look at this. How am I supposed to let the children sleep? Tell me how?" one woman told CBC News after her tent was blown over by the wind. "There's nothing [we can do]. The bedding gets soaked with water, and we need two or three days to dry it before we can sleep on it again. These tents don’t protect from rain or strong weather at all," said another. "Now we have our children living in the street,” one man added. “We left the tents and everything." 

The torrential downpours cause garbage and sewage to flood the encampments, heightening the danger of infectious diseases spreading. The Director of Gaza City's Al-Shifa Hospital told Haaretz there’s been a noticeable rise in hypothermia among children and hospitalizations of the elderly. "We warn that the ongoing impact of the weather could lead to increased mortality, especially among infants, pregnant women, the elderly, and those with chronic illnesses. The risk is exacerbated by the shortage of medicines," he said. 

UNICEF’s spokesperson describes seeing children walking through muddy puddles without coats or shoes and with no way of keeping dry, and rising cases of diarrhea and other infectious diseases. 

Seeking Shelter, Only to Have the Building Collapse

Other Palestinians have been forced to find shelter in the few remaining buildings Israel has left standing in Gaza. Yet most of these are damaged and dangerous, and during Storm Byron at least five collapsed. By December 12, some 12 Gazans had been killed by the storm, including at least three children who died from hypothermia, and several people killed in building collapses. 

“A Catastrophe Well Known in Advance”

A torrential rain storm battered Gaza a month ago—so why weren’t people prepared for this one, including as Storm Byron approached? And why are Palestinians sheltering in make-shift tents in the dead of winter in the first place?

One Word: Genocide! 

Genocide carried out by the U.S. and Israel for over two years, a genocide which is continuing even after Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Netan-nazi (aka Netanyahu) declared a “ceasefire.”

At least 1.7 million Palestinians—over 80 percent of Gaza's population—are displaced and forced to live in decrepit tents or makeshift shelters. People have been made homeless because Israel systematically damaged or destroyed 84 percent of all structures, including completely destroying over 60 percent of its housing units.

On top of this nightmare, Israel is deliberately preventing new, winter-ready tents, mobile homes and other shelter material from coming into Gaza, despite having committed to providing them under Trump’s ceasefire and peace plan. Most existing tents and shelters are old, worn out or made of thin plastic or cloth. At least 300,000 new tents are urgently needed for the roughly 1.5 million people still displaced, and many of these sit right now at the border—waiting to be allowed in! 

"Yet two months into the so-called 'ceasefire,' Israel is still blocking aid,” the Israeli human rights group B’tselem posted on X. “More than 6,500 trucks are currently waiting to be let into Gaza with essential winter supplies including tents, blankets, warm clothing and hygiene materials. Meanwhile, children are going barefoot and wearing summer clothes in the freezing cold."¹

Amidst the freezing water and storms, Palestinians in Gaza are facing floods of sewage and rising rates of disease. Israel systematically destroyed all sewage, drainage, electricity, and water systems, as well as hundreds of vehicles, including bulldozers and other equipment used to pump water. 

As if this weren’t horrific enough, Israel also deliberately targeted Gaza’s healthcare infrastructure, destroying half its hospitals and leaving the other half only partially functional.

And today, there is no sign of the reconstruction that Trump promised and Netanyahu signed onto.

Tania Hary, the CEO of the Israeli human rights organization Gisha, said that the devastation wrought by Storm Byron in Gaza "is not a natural disaster, but a catastrophe that was well known in advance." She added, "Israel bears responsibility for the lives that will be lost and for the immense suffering of the civilian population.” 

The Lie of Trump’s Gaza Ceasefire

Israel is continuing to make Gaza unlivable for the Palestinian people and kill them—with cold, starvation, disease, bullets and tanks. On December 11, as the storm was hitting, Israel killed two Palestinian women and wounded others in in Jabalia in the northern Gaza Strip. The day before two youth were killed there. Doctors said that the 17-year-old boy had been run over and crushed to death by an Israeli tank. The other, a child, had been shot in the head. 

These murders bring the number of Palestinians that Israel has murdered in Gaza—since the Trump-sponsored "ceasefire" was signed—to at least 383 killed and 1002 wounded! And in the two years since October 7, 2023, Israel has slaughtered at least 70,373 Palestinian people, with 171,079 injured. Tens of thousands more lie uncounted and decomposing beneath the rubble.

The Trump Regime Steps in… to Defend Israel!

Israel’s open use of starvation and deprivation as tools of war and genocide have outraged millions around the globe. Now, its monstrously cruel denial of even basic shelter for Palestinians during a bitter winter is stoking further outrage.

In response, U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Mike Waltz traveled to Gaza's border to back up Israel’s lie that over 600 trucks of aid a day were entering Gaza (this is the number mandated in Trump's ceasefire plan). In reality, no more than 234 trucks per day have entered Gaza on average since the ceasefire began according to officials in Gaza as well as most aid agencies. This is yet another example of the fascist Trump regime continuing to back Israel, even as it violates Trump’s ceasefire, and continues its genocide. 

As we wrote last week:

Netanyahu (aka Netan-Nazi) and Israel’s rulers are seizing on Hamas’s October 7 attack on Israel—which included the war crimes of taking hostages and the murder of civilians—to attempt a “final solution” to the “Palestinian problem.” This means, at a minimum, reducing the Palestinians to such a state that they can no longer pose any obstacle to Israel’s objectives. Beyond that, it could mean mass expulsion and/or slaughter on a massive scale, beyond even what Israel is now carrying out.

This is what has continued to unfold—in new and horrific ways. And because the U.S. system of capitalism-imperialism requires Israel as a military and political outpost in the strategic region of the Middle East—the rulers of this system have continued to back and fund and support Israel's open genocidal slaughter.

End Israel’s Blockade of Gaza!

Stop the U.S.-Israeli Genocide of the Palestinian People

This whole system is rotten and illegitimate! We need and we demand: a whole new way to live, a fundamentally different system!