Palestinians crowded into 30% of Gaza as new shelter aid covers just 35,000 families
Gaza’s aid agencies have enough supplies to provide new emergency shelter for only 35,000 families as another autumn-winter season approaches, while nearly 1.98 million Palestinians lack proper housing, aid agencies have warned.
«Barely any Palestinians are present in the approximately 70% of Gaza under complete Israeli control, including the entirety of Rafah,» Shaina Low, the communication adviser for the Norwegian Refugee Council (NRC) Palestine, told Kursiv Uzbekistan on Friday.
The geographical squeeze is colliding with a shelter response that cannot match the need.
The Shelter Cluster, a humanitarian coalition led by the NRC and supported by the UN’s International Organisation for Migration (IOM), warned in a fresh report that 1.98 million people, or 94% of Gaza’s population, require shelter or basic household assistance.
Engineers found 54 per cent of tents and makeshift shelters in «poor» or «very poor» condition. More than 106,000 households were living in temporary structures considered a serious risk to health, safety or dignity.
The winter response is severely underfunded, the NRC Palestine commented. «Right now, there are only supplies to provide shelter for 35,000 families and supplies to reinforce or improve shelter for an additional 35,000 families,» Low told Kursiv Uzbekistan.
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The Shelter Cluster requested $165 million to cover the most acute needs of Gaza families, but only $44 million has been provided, she noted. In all, Shelter Cluster estimated that $562 million was needed to provide emergency shelter for the Palestinians in 2026.
What shelter means for Palestinians in Gaza
A tent is supposed to bridge the days or weeks before a family finds somewhere safer. In Gaza, it has become long-term accommodation.
Almost two-thirds of households surveyed by the Shelter Cluster were living in tents or structures assembled from salvaged materials. More than half of families in tents had used the same one for over a year, while 16 per cent had depended on it for more than two years.
«A shelter is not adequate simply because it has four walls or a roof,» said Jehan Salim, the national Shelter Cluster coordinator.
The report measured shelter by what a family can do inside it. More than seven in 10 households had difficulty sleeping. 64% could not safely store enough food and water, while families had an average of only three hours of lighting a day.
Read more: Israel cuts ties with UN agencies over criticism of Gaza war
Israel insisted more materials have recently entered Gaza. Its foreign ministry reported that about 500 truckloads of new tents and thousands of pallets of shelter supplies arrived during the final week of July. Earlier in August, the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) had also recorded an increase in overall aid volumes.
