Gazans desperate to create shelter from rubble in 'miserable' conditions
By Saghir Hussain ·
Heavy rain has turned Gaza's displacement camps into open sewers, and the world's response remains stuck between humanitarian rhetoric and political paralysis.
The calculus of obstruction
Israel controls every entry point into the Strip. Since October 2023, the flow of shelter materials — timber, plastic sheeting, insulation, tools — has been restricted to a trickle. Israeli authorities cite "dual-use" concerns: that Hamas could divert pipes for tunnels, timber for bunkers. The result is a policy that treats a family's roof as a potential security threat. UNRWA and the International Committee of the Red Cross have repeatedly documented the backlog at Kerem Shalom and Rafah crossings. Aid trucks queue for days. When they move, they carry food and medicine first. Shelter kit components sit in warehouses in El-Arish, waiting for approvals that never come fast enough.
Hamas, for its part, has embedded fighters and infrastructure within civilian zones, a tactic that invites bombardment and makes distinction impossible. The group's governance vacuum in areas it no longer controls means no local authority coordinates distribution. Looting of aid convoys — sometimes by clans, sometimes by armed groups — compounds the breakdown. Ordinary Gazans pay the price twice: first from the bombs, then from the bureaucracy.
The economics of rubble
A standard emergency shelter kit costs roughly £120 delivered. A transitional shelter — timber frame, sandbag walls, corrugated iron roof — runs to £450 and lasts two winters if maintained. Neither is reaching people at scale. Instead, families hack at collapsed apartment blocks with sledgehammers and bare hands, salvaging twisted rebar and crushed concrete blocks. They prop up tarpaulins with snapped telephone poles. The labour is free; the materials are trash. But rubble shelters offer no drainage, no ventilation, and no protection from the cold now settling over the Mediterranean coast.
Humanitarian agencies estimate 1.9 million people are displaced. Of those, perhaps 60% live in makeshift sites — tents, plastic sheets, open ground. The rest crowd into schools, hospitals, or the homes of relatives already stretched to breaking point. Winter temperatures drop to single digits. Respiratory infections among children under five have tripled since October, according to WHO field reports. Hypothermia cases are appearing in clinics that lack heating, antibiotics, or intravenous fluids.
The diplomatic deadlock
The US, UK, and EU have voted for UN Security Council resolutions demanding "immediate, safe, and unhindered" humanitarian access. They have also supplied the weapons systems used in the offensive that created the rubble. Arab states have pledged billions for reconstruction — but only after a political settlement that remains theoretical. Egypt controls the southern gate and fears permanent displacement into Sinai. Qatar and Turkey fund tent cities but cannot import heavy machinery without Israeli sign-off. The Palestinian Authority, sidelined in Gaza since 2007, has no operational capacity on the ground.
Meanwhile, private contractors in Israel and Europe have submitted bids for "debris management" programmes worth hundreds of millions. The rubble contains asbestos, unexploded ordnance, and human remains. Clearing it safely requires specialised equipment that does not exist in Gaza. No one has agreed who pays, who insures the workers, or where the waste goes.
The rain does not wait for memoranda of understanding. It falls on the child coughing under a shredded tarpaulin, on the grandmother stacking wet concrete blocks, on the aid worker watching a truck sit at a checkpoint for the twelfth day. The world has decided, repeatedly, that this is someone else's problem to solve. The water rising around their ankles suggests otherwise.