(Photo credit: nrc)The Cradle
OCT 10, 2026
Israel is blocking thousands of ready-to-use shelter kits as part of its campaign of genocide, which entered its fourth year this week
Israel’s blockade of essential supplies will leave nearly the entire population of Gaza without adequate shelter as the El Niño weather phenomenon threatens heavy rains and flooding in the besieged enclave this winter, the UN migration agency (IOM) warned on 9 October.
A year after the so-called “ceasefire” was announced, nearly two million Palestinians still need shelter assistance, IOM Director General Amy Pope said.
The supplies aid groups currently hold or have en route can meet only 17 percent of winter needs, leaving families to face a fourth winter of rain, cold, and flooding without adequate protection.
About 8,600 IOM emergency shelter kits await delivery just outside the Strip, but Israel’s siege and repeated rejection of shipments at crossings keep them out. Families remain exposed to the elements in rotting tents and damaged buildings.
Israel’s deliberate obstruction and funding shortfalls have left aid groups unable to meet immense needs. Humanitarian teams are cobbling together makeshift aid from salvaged and locally sourced materials, IOM said.
“The solutions are known, the supplies are ready, and humanitarian teams are prepared to deliver,” Pope said.
Dozens were killed in Gaza City last month when a ruined building gave way, and in August an IOM partner identified more than 3,600 structures as unsafe and liable to collapse, a risk intensified by the El Niño rains.
Nearly 1.8 million people are living in displacement sites, most of them in flood-prone areas where shattered drainage systems offer little defense against the coming storms.
“Families who have already endured repeated displacement and devastating loss must be able to face the winter in safety and dignity,” Pope said. “Shelter materials must enter quickly, predictably and at the scale required.”
The warning comes days after the Gaza Government Media Office reported that around 162,000 of the roughly 270,000 tents sheltering more than 1.5 million displaced Palestinians are no longer usable.
The office also said Israel had allowed only 72,826 of the 210,600 aid and reconstruction trucks promised under the US-backed “ceasefire” to enter – less than 35 percent – while violating the so-called ‘ceasefire’ more than 5,100 times, killing at least 1,400 Palestinians and wounding nearly 5,000 others.
A UN report released in August found that 94 percent of Gaza’s 2.1 million residents need shelter, and that more than 70 percent of families’ shelters had flooded last winter.
UN Spokesperson Stephane Dujarric said Israeli restrictions on heavy machinery, spare parts, and other critical supplies continue to hamper rubble clearance across the strip.
Israel’s siege has systematically stripped Gaza of the means to sustain life, choking off food, water, fuel, medicine, and shelter while near-daily attacks kill civilians and raze their homes as part of Tel Aviv’s ethnic cleansing campaign aimed at depopulating the strip.
