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13-12-2025
GAZA STRIP/ DEIR-EL-BALAH: After a night of relentless rain, Arafat al-Ghandour and his wife, Nour, finally exhaled in relief as the morning sun emerged, if only briefly, over the soaked displacement camp.
The couple, parents of five, live in a worn tent riddled with holes. They spent the night battling water pouring in from every direction.
Arafat, 39, shares the cramped space, no larger than eight square metres (86sq feet), with 15 family members, including his elderly parents, his sister and her family, and his brother’s wife and children. The conditions, he says, are “inhumane”.
“All night I was plugging the holes with rags and plastic bags,” Arafat told media.
“I haven’t slept yet. And they say the storm hasn’t really started.”
In the early morning, the family hurried to spread their drenched clothes, blankets, and belongings in the sunlight.
“We finally breathed a sigh of relief when the sun came out,” said Nour, sitting beside her husband. “All our clothes were soaked. We have nothing else. Even our blankets and the children’s clothes were drenched. I took the kids outside immediately just to dry off a little.”
Nour described the panic of waking up to find water pouring into the tent.
“My children were asleep and soaked. I started waking them one by one so they wouldn’t get even more drenched,” she said. “This isn’t living.”
Once a season she loved, winter now makes her anxious and miserable, with only meagre shelter offered by the tents.
“We’ve lost faith in everything. I’ve given so many interviews and made appeals. They all come to film our tents and our lives, and the media and everyone else see us crying out, but nothing changes,” Nour tells media angrily, pointing to the tattered sides of her tent.
“Would anyone accept living in this place? To face winter like this?”
“Would anyone accept living like this?”
The family fled Beit Lahiya in northern Gaza a year and a half ago and settled in Deir el-Balah after losing their home. With no means to rebuild or return, they remained in the south.
“There’s a tent there and a tent here. So we said, ‘Why try to move?’ We stayed,” said Arafat, who has been unemployed for two years.
“Can you believe we all sleep crammed together in this place without any privacy? Imagine me sleeping here with my wife next to me, while my brother’s wife and brother sleep directly opposite us?” Arafat says bitterly.
“No man with any sense of honor in the world would accept this but what can we do? We have no other options. Our dignity has been trampled on from all sides.”
He looked around the camp, frustrated.
“Where are the caravans and housing units the media keeps talking about? We never see anything. Why isn’t anyone solving our suffering?”
The family, like thousands of displaced Palestinians, lives with no income and cannot afford food, clean water, clothes, or blankets.
“I can’t even feed my children,” Arafat said. “How am I supposed to buy a tent at these ridiculous prices? If charity kitchen (tekkiya) comes, we eat; if it doesn’t, we don’t. That’s our life now.”
According to Arafat, a good quality tent costs between 1,800 and 2,500 shekels, equivalent to about $550 to $775. Tarpaulins and nylon range in price from 250 to 400 shekels (roughly $75-125) depending on their length, he said.
“These tents should be given to the displaced for free, not sold at prices no one can afford,” he said. “How can an unemployed man who has been struggling for two years, like me, buy a tent to shelter my children?” (Int’l Monitoring Desk)
