TUESDAY night was described by meteorologists in Palestine as the coldest of the year, laid bare the scale of suffering endured by hundreds of thousands of Palestinians, especially those crammed into makeshift tents in Gaza that resemble homes in name only.
Thin fabric walls shuddered with every gust of wind. Torn plastic sheets, gaping holes never repaired, and damp ground that drained warmth from exhausted bodies turned the cold into an all-consuming threat.
Inside his tent, 52-year-old Abu Khalil Siyam said he spent the night pressing his hands against the plastic walls to block the wind from reaching his children.
‘The cold bit into my fingers,’ he said. ‘The tent doesn’t protect us. We just try to convince ourselves we’re still alive.’
In the Mawasi area of Khan Younis, a family of seven shares just two damp blankets inside a tent only a few metres wide.
Umm Yazan Suroor, 29, said she wrapped her infant in her own clothes and covered the rest of the children with a single blanket.
‘I watched their chests to make sure they were still breathing,’ she said. ‘I didn’t sleep for a minute. Fear was stronger than exhaustion.’
With no mattresses, the ground itself became an enemy. Cold soil seeped into bones, worsening joint pain among the elderly. ‘I put cardboard under my back, but it didn’t help,’ said 63-year-old Abu Ali Alwan, displaced for months. ‘I used to complain about the cold at home. I never knew the earth could be this cruel,’ he added.
There was no electricity, no fuel, no firewood. In desperation, some families burned scraps of cardboard or plastic despite the toxic smoke.
‘We know it’s dangerous,’ said 24-year-old Medhat Al-Khatib. ‘But the children were shaking. We chose the lesser of two evils: smoke or freezing.’
Sleep never truly came, only brief, uneasy dozes and a long wait for dawn. When morning finally arrived, faces were pale, eyes bloodshot, and bodies drained.
For Gaza’s displaced families, survivors of genocide now facing winter, the cold has become another front in a relentless struggle to stay alive.
11 killed in Gaza!
AT LEAST 11 Palestinians, including two children and three journalists, have been killed in Israeli attacks on Gaza since dawn, with six others injured, according to Gaza’s Ministry of Health.
Munir al-Bursh, director-general of the ministry, told Al Jazeera that the photojournalists killed when their vehicle was struck on Wednesday worked for the Egyptian Committee for Gaza Relief, which supervises Egypt’s relief work in Gaza.
Anas Ghunaim, Abdul Ra’ouf and Shaath Mohammad Qeshta were documenting developments on the ground in central Gaza near the so-called Netzarim Corridor when they were hit in an Israeli strike, colleagues and medical officials told Al Jazeera. A fourth person was also killed in the attack, an Al Jazeera team on the ground reported.
Video footage circulating online showed their charred, bombed-out vehicle by the roadside, smoke still rising from the wreckage.
Mohammed Mansour, the committee’s spokesman, told The Associated Press news agency that the journalists were filming a newly established displacement camp. He said the strike occurred about 5km (3 miles) from Israeli-controlled territory and that the vehicle was known to the Israeli military as belonging to the Egyptian committee.
Israeli Army Radio, citing an Israeli security source, said that the Israeli Air Force had targeted a vehicle in central Gaza, claiming that its occupants were using a drone to collect intelligence on army forces.
