Winter is hitting Gaza and many Palestinians have little protection from the cold

(22 Dec 2024)
RESTRICTION SUMMARY:

ASSOCIATED PRESS
Khan Younis, Gaza Strip - 18 December 2024
1. Various of Omar Shabet, displaced from Gaza City, tying up the nylon of his tent to protect his family from rainwater
2. Various of Shabet repairing his tent
3. Various of Shabet standing with his children outside tent
4. SOUNDBITE (Arabic) Omar Shabet, displaced from Gaza City:
"We enter the tent by the time of the Maghrib (sunset) call to prayer and do not leave after that because---as you know--- the cold outside is very harsh and severe. Therefore, we stay inside the tent. We do suffer from the cold, especially after midnight, around 12, 1, and 2am. I am struggling, and even my 7-year-old daughter cries at night from the severity of the cold."
5. Various of Shabet eating with his children inside tent
6. Various of Shabet and his children seen eating food through hole in tent
7. SOUNDBITE (Arabic) Omar Shabet, displaced from Gaza City:
"Even if we want to light a fire, where could we light it in an enclosed space like this, inside a tent? Even outside the tent, where the weather is cold, we have fears because of the occupation aircraft. More than one accident happened and several tents were struck due to lighting fires, so we suffer from this issue, and we rejoice when the morning comes, because we suffer from extreme cold at night."
8. Various of tents with torn fabric
9. Various of hundreds of tents used by displaced people as shelter
10. Child wearing torn sandals
11. Various of barefoot children
12. Various of Abu Zarada and her family sitting on ground outside their tent
13. Various of child with torn clothes sitting on the ground next to her grandmother
14. SOUNDBITE (Arabic) Reda Abu Zarada, displaced from Jabaliya:
"No proper clothes, no socks, nothing. We never expected to live such a life. My house was so good in the north."
15. Various of Reda Abu Zarada showing holes in torn fabric of her tent, UPSOUND (Arabic): "Look, it doesn't protect us, neither in the winter nor in the summer. Thank God."
16. SOUNDBITE (Arabic) Reda Abu Zarada, displaced from Jabaliya:
"Our blankets are very thin, they never warm us. We feel the moisture from the ground, and the cold is killing us. We wake up in the morning freezing. Do you know what freezing means? We are shivering from the cold."
17. Various of child looking through entrance of tent

ASSOCIATED PRESS
Khan Younis, Gaza Strip - 19 December 2024
++NIGHT SHOTS++
18. Various of Abu Zarada and her family gathering near fire to warm themselves
19. Various of Abu Zarada cooking for her family
20. Various of children eating
21. Various of children sleeping near their grandmother inside their tent
STORYLINE:
Winter is hitting the Gaza Strip and many of the nearly 2 million Palestinians displaced by the devastating 14-month war with Israel are struggling to protect themselves from the wind, the cold and the rain.

There is a shortage of blankets and warm clothing, little wood for fires and the tents and patched-together tarps families are living in have grown increasingly threadbare over months of heavy use, according to aid workers and residents.

"We go inside our tents after sunset and don’t go out because it is very cold and it gets colder by midnight," Omar Shabet, a displaced father from Gaza city, said.

"My 7-year-old daughter almost cries at night because of how cold she is," he added.

Shabet added he feared that lighting a fire outside his tent would make his family a target for Israeli warplanes.


















AP video shot by Mohammad Jahjouh



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