After a year of war, at least one million people are facing months in the cold. Some said tents, blankets and warm clothes now qualified as luxuries.
A year into the war in Gaza, the prices of ready-made tents and supplies to build even flimsy shelters are soaring. Warm blankets, clothes and firewood are hard to get or prohibitively expensive. Finding a vacant apartment is out of the question for most displaced civilians. And many have no income at all.
So people eking out an existence in tattered tents and makeshift shelters across the enclave are bracing for a tough, rainy winter. This one, many expect, will be worse than the last.
Most of the roughly two million people in Gaza have been displaced at least once by the war, compounding the hardships of a population enduring waves of Israeli bombardment and widespread lawlessness.
Last week, Israel issued yet more evacuation orders for people in the north of Gaza, at the same time its expanded military operations in the south resulted in the killing of the Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar but little movement toward an end to the war.
Mahmoud Abu Helal, a 33-year-old pharmacist, has been sharing a leaky self-made tent with 12 relatives since he fled the southern city of Rafah in May, when the Israeli ground invasion there began. He thought they would be able to return to their homes in a few days, he said, so they only brought summer clothes.
