Gaza’s floods are no accident, but the result of Israel’s destruction of its infrastructure

At least six people have been killed as torrential rain once again floods Gaza. On 8 November, Gaza’s Civil Defence said a woman and four children had been killed when a sand embankment collapsed onto tents sheltering displaced families in Deir al-Balah, in central Gaza. An infant was also reported to have drowned.

The woman was identified as Tahrir Nabhan, and two of the children killed were reported to be her own.

Flooding began on Friday 6 November as heavy rain and strong winds swept across the Strip. Gaza’s Government Media Office said at least 70,000 tents were flooded within the first 12 hours of the storm, and the Health Ministry later said 350,000 displaced Palestinians were left sleeping in the open. Footage of a tornado at sea also circulated on social media, showing the strength of the storm.

The Palestinian Civil Defence said water levels reached as high as 1.5 metres in some areas. It added that its teams had been able to respond to only about 10 per cent of the 2,000 emergency calls received over the first weekend of flooding, citing fuel shortages and Israeli restrictions on machinery as barriers to helping more people.

The Civil Defence called on the international community to do more to protect displaced people, saying:

“Protecting the lives of displaced people is an urgent humanitarian responsibility. Their tents must not become death traps beneath sand and rainwater.”

Flooding poses an enormous risk to Gaza’s population. The UN estimates that 1.4 million people, more than half the population, live in tents or temporary shelters after being forcibly displaced from their homes, and nearly 950,000 displaced people live in areas exposed to flooding. 

A recent assessment by the Palestine Shelter Cluster, a group of UN agencies and aid organisations coordinating shelter in Gaza, found that 58 per cent of the population are living in “critical or catastrophic” conditions.

But these conditions have not come out of nowhere, and this is far from the first time Gazans have struggled to cope with “natural disasters”. Ultimately, these conditions are not natural but man-made, and heavy rainfall should not cripple whole communities in the way we have seen.

Israel’s targeted destruction of sanitation infrastructure, such as drainage systems and sewage plants, combined with its continuing blockade on the materials desperately needed to rebuild Gaza, has created a man-made crisis even on the best of days. This means that when changing weather patterns bring winter storms, there is no capacity to withstand even modest rainfall.

READ: Israel undermining Gaza health system: Doctors Without Borders

Humanitarian organisations have been quick to identify Israel’s blockade of the enclave as a key factor in the flooding. Ahmad Alhendawi, Save the Children’s Regional Director for the Middle East, North Africa and Eastern Europe, said:

“This is not simply the result of bad weather. Tents, shelter kits and fuel are waiting at Gaza’s borders while children sleep in floodwater, because the Israeli authorities are blocking their entry. This is a choice.”

The most painful part of the suffering in Gaza has always been how close aid is. The United Nations says more than 150,000 tents from member states, humanitarian organisations and the Egyptian Relief Committee are waiting at Gaza’s border to be let in. This is emergency aid that could prevent more deaths, particularly among infants, who are more vulnerable to disease and drowning in severe weather.

Gazans have also spoken out on social media. Aisha, who is raising two children during the genocide, wrote:

“With every new season comes a new hardship for us. This is more than anyone in the world could bear.”

Ahmed Nashwan, who lives in a tent with his family, said he believed he was prepared for the rain, having sealed all the holes in the tent just days before. But nothing could have prepared them for what came. He said:

“At first, all our fear was for the roof. If water collected on top of it, it could collapse on us, so we kept beating every sagging spot with a broom handle. Only five minutes. That’s all it took. My sister felt something wet under her feet, and she thought it was just a few drops that had leaked from above.

“She turned on her phone’s light, and the light revealed a nightmare: more than five centimetres of water had flooded the ground beneath her. Her scream tore through the tent and tore through our hearts. And in that moment, we knew. My God, our mattresses were floating like a lost boat on a pond!”

Ahmed and his family spent the rest of that night stitching their tent back together in the darkness, surrounded by the screams of their neighbours as the whole camp went under water. Days later, their mattresses are still soaked and show no sign of drying as temperatures drop and the rain continues.

Now he fears for the rest of the winter, unsure how much longer their tent can hold out.

This fear of yet another winter of torrential rain has settled across Gaza in recent days.

Hassan Muhammed, who lives with his three children in a displacement camp, shared videos of the flooding, saying: “At first it was beautiful and pleasant until the rain didn’t stop and floods started entering our tents and in the alleys and streets between the tents.”

This is not the first time Gaza has seen severe flooding since the genocide began in October 2023. With sewage and drainage systems largely destroyed, water quickly becomes stagnant, unable to drain away from affected areas.

READ: UN: Israeli restrictions hamper relief efforts for flood-hit Palestinians in Gaza

Without this infrastructure, water can quickly become a deadly force. We saw this in November 2024, when coastal flooding hit displacement sites along Gaza’s coastline, including in Deir al-Balah. The Government Media Office said about 10,000 tents were damaged or washed away, and OCHA, the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, said 7,000 families living on the shoreline were affected, even though rainfall was far lower than this year’s.

This was followed by Storm Byron, which struck Gaza on 10 December 2025 and killed at least 12 people. UNRWA chief Philippe Lazzarini said the storm and the weather systems that followed it damaged more than 42,000 tents and makeshift shelters and affected at least 235,000 people. During the storm, eight-month-old Rahaf Abu Jazar died from the cold after her family’s tent in Khan Younis flooded.

Almost a year has passed since these tragic events, and the international community seems to have done little to protect civilians from further deaths. International organisations continue to echo the same calls for aid and machinery to enter Gaza so that reconstruction can begin, while Israel ignores these calls, leaving Palestinians to endure yet another winter of hypothermia and suffering.

For Gazans, flooding brings more than the collapse of makeshift homes. Because sanitation infrastructure has been destroyed, the World Health Organization has raised serious concerns about floodwater mixing with sewage and contaminating tents.

Contaminated water poses a serious threat to people across Gaza because it can become a hotspot for the transmission of life-threatening diseases. Gaza’s population, especially infants, is at much higher risk of contracting these diseases because of overcrowded living conditions and malnutrition.

This would not be the first time infectious diseases have spread as a result of flooding. In recent years, Gaza has seen outbreaks of hepatitis A, diarrhoeal illnesses, respiratory infections and polio. These spread quickly through contaminated water and in overcrowded, unsanitary conditions, and without heavy machinery to rebuild the dismantled sewage system, a return of widespread disease seems likely.

Of particular concern is polio, which had not been seen in Gaza for 25 years until July 2024, when the virus was detected in sewage samples in Khan Younis and Deir al-Balah. The following month, the first case of paralytic polio was confirmed in a 10-month-old baby in Deir al-Balah, who was left paralysed in one leg.

Rolling out vaccinations has been extremely difficult, especially as flooding has left several mobile units unable to operate. Humanitarian workers will have to act quickly to stop these diseases spreading again, or more deaths will become inevitable.

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