Displaced Palestinians gathered near tents after heavy rainfall in Gaza City on Sunday, as reported by REUTERS.

On Monday, heavy rains flooded the tent encampments of displaced Palestinians across the Gaza Strip, exacerbating the seasonal winter hardships for communities already ravaged by 13 months of war. Israeli forces intensified their strikes in the region, adding to the misery. Overnight downpours inundated tents, and in some cases, washed away the plastic and cloth shelters used by displaced Gazans, who have been repeatedly uprooted during the conflict between Israel and Hamas militants. Some residents placed water buckets on the ground to protect mats from leaks and dug trenches to drain water away from their tents. With many tents worn out from the early stages of the war and no longer providing adequate protection, the cost of new tents and plastic sheeting has skyrocketed, making them unaffordable for displaced families.

People braved the rain at the Bureij refugee camp in the central Gaza Strip on Sunday, as captured by AFP. Suad Al-Sabea, a mother of six from northern Gaza, now resides in a classroom with broken windows at a school in Khan Younis, which houses displaced families. Sabea bakes bread in a wood-fuelled earth oven to support her children, but rainwater has spoiled the flour and damaged the oven, threatening her livelihood. 'I was scared of life or death, now we worry about the rain,' she said. 'The dough drowned in water, and many mattresses drowned in water. It was raining on top of my head, and I kept baking to provide for my children,' Sabea told Reuters. Other encampments near the beach were also flooded, with some tents being swept away by high waves. 'The sea took away my little daughter, thank God we were able to rescue her,' said Mariam Abu Saqer, who used to live in a tent by the beach before it was flooded by seawater. 'Where should we go? Wherever we go, they tell us there is no space,' she said.

The Palestinian Civil Emergency Service reported that thousands of displaced people were affected by seasonal flooding and urgently called for new tents and caravans from aid donors. The UN Palestinian refugee agency UNRWA stated on X that the first rain of winter means even more suffering for the displaced. 'Around half a million people are at risk in areas of flooding,' it said. 'The situation will only get worse with every drop of rain, every bomb, every strike.' Meanwhile, Israeli military strikes intensified across the enclave. In Rafah in the southern Gaza Strip, an Israeli air strike killed at least four people, according to medics. Tanks also deepened their incursions in the northern edge of Beit Hanoun and Beit Lahiya, and Jabalia, the largest of the enclave's eight historic refugee camps. Medics reported that seven Palestinians were killed by two Israeli air strikes in the Jabalia area. On Monday, residents said Israeli planes dropped new leaflets on Beit Lahiya ordering remaining residents to leave to the south, stating that the area would come under attack and providing them with a map. Residents reported that Israeli forces had blown up hundreds of houses since renewing operations in an area that Israel claimed months ago had been cleared of militants. Palestinians accuse Israel of trying to permanently depopulate the area to create a buffer zone along the northern edge of Gaza, a claim Israel denies. Israel's campaign in Gaza has resulted in the deaths of more than 44,200 people and uprooted nearly the entire population at least once, according to Gaza officials, while reducing wide swathes of the narrow coastal territory to rubble. The war began in response to a cross-border attack by Hamas-led militants on October 7, 2023, in which gunmen killed around 1,200 people and took more than 250 hostages back to Gaza, according to Israeli tallies.

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