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Displaced Palestinians, staying in makeshift tents, struggle to survive under harsh conditions as rain and severe storms affect the Nuseirat Refugee Camp of Deir al-Balah, Gaza on December 27, 2025. [Moiz Salhi – Anadolu Agency]
At least 235,000 people have been affected by a “man-made” crisis in Gaza after low-pressure weather systems hit the war-ravaged enclave, the head of the UN agency for Palestinian refugees (UNRWA) said Monday, Anadolu reports.
“Months of war and displacement forced people in Gaza to live amid collapsing ruins in makeshift shelters or in flimsy tents,” UNRWA Commissioner-General Philippe Lazzarini said on the US social media company X.
“While Storm Byron that struck Gaza on December 10 was a natural hazard, its consequences are man-made,” Lazzarini stressed.
Heavy rains and strong winds triggered by low-pressure weather systems caused the collapse of 17 buildings and the full or partial damage of more than 42,000 tents or makeshift shelters and affected at least 235,000 people between Dec. 10 and 17, Lazzarini said, citing data by the Shelter Cluster in Gaza.
A new wave of weather depression has been battering Gaza since the weekend, causing the death of two people and the uprooting of tens of thousands of tents, according to civil defense.
Weather conditions pose great danger to displaced Palestinians who are living in worn-out tents or severely damaged high-risk buildings, which have been under repeated Israeli strikes since October 2023.
The Israeli army has killed more than 71,200 people, mostly women and children, and injured over 171,200 others since October 2023 in Gaza in a brutal assault that also left the enclave in ruins.
Despite a ceasefire that took effect in Gaza on Oct. 10, Israel still closes the territory’s crossings and prevents the entry of mobile homes and reconstruction materials, worsening the plight of nearly 2.4 million people in the enclave.
Keir Starmer objects to criticism of the IDF. He asks how could anyone object to them starving people to death, forced marches like the Nazis did, bombing Gaza’s hospitals and universities, mass-murdering journalists, healthworkers and starving people queuing for food, killing and raping prisoners and murdering children. He calls for people to stop obstructing his genocide for Israel.Orcas discuss Genocide-supporting and complicit Zionists. Donald Trump, Keith Starmer, David Lammy, Rachel Reeves, Angela Rayner and Wes Streeting are acknowledged as evil genocide-complicit and supporting cnuts.Donald Fuhrump says that Amerikkka doesn’t bother with crimes or charges anymore, not being 100% Amerikkkan and opposing his real estate intentions is enough.
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Itamar Ben Gvir, Israel’s national security minister, during a news conference at the Knesset in Jerusalem, Israel, on, 05 February , 2024 [Kobi Wolf/Bloomberg via Getty Images]
Israel’s far-right Otzma Yehudit party, led by the extremist National Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir, is continuing to push a new bill that targets the Islamic call to prayer in mosques by imposing strict restrictions and tough enforcement measures.
The party described the proposal as a “dramatic change” in how the authorities deal with what it called “noise coming from mosques”.
In a statement, Ben Gvir said: “The unreasonable noise of the muezzin harms quality of life.”
MK Zvika Fogel said the issue “is not religious but health-related”, calling for firm and clear legislation to address what he described as “systematic legal violations”.
Fogel, who chairs the Knesset’s National Security Committee, submitted the proposal. It is based on the principle of a “general ban with a special permit”, meaning loudspeakers would not be allowed in any mosque unless an official permit is granted. The permit would take into account factors such as volume levels, the mosque’s location, and how close it is to residential areas.
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UK Foreign Secretary David Lammy says that UK is suspeding 30 of 350 arms licences to Israel. He also confirms the UK government’s support for Israel’s Gaza genocide and the UK government and military’s active participation in genocide.Keir Starmer objects to criticism of the IDF. He asks how could anyone object to them starving people to death, forced marches like the Nazis did, bombing Gaza’s hospitals and universities, mass-murdering journalists, healthworkers and starving people queuing for food, killing and raping prisoners and murdering children. He calls for people to stop obstructing his genocide for Israel.Orcas discuss Genocide-supporting and complicit Zionists. Donald Trump, Keith Starmer, David Lammy, Rachel Reeves, Angela Rayner and Wes Streeting are acknowledged as evil genocide-complicit and supporting cnuts.
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Egyptian Foreign Minister Badr Abdel Aty gives a speech in Cairo, Egypt on September 9, 2024. [Photo by Sayed Hassan/Getty Images]
Egypt’s Foreign Minister Badr Abdel Aty said his country rejected large financial offers made in return for agreeing to the displacement of Palestinians, stressing Egypt’s commitment to international law and its rejection of what he described as the “law of the jungle”.
In an interview with the television programme Al-Hekaya on MBC Masr, Abdel Aty said Egypt received three offers involving huge sums of money in exchange for approving displacement. He said the first offer included cancelling Egypt’s debts, along with other large financial incentives.
The minister said Egypt firmly rejected all the offers, adding that the Israeli negotiator fully understands Egypt’s clear and fixed position on the issue.
He said that after more than 45 years of diplomatic relations with Israel, there is a mutual understanding of each side’s positions and strength.
Abdel Aty added that Israel, as an occupying power under international law, is responsible for opening border crossings to allow aid to enter, but is ignoring international law.
He stressed that Egypt remains committed to international law, warning that abandoning it would mean living under the “law of the jungle”.
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Keir Starmer objects to criticism of the IDF. He asks how could anyone object to them starving people to death, forced marches like the Nazis did, bombing Gaza’s hospitals and universities, mass-murdering journalists, healthworkers and starving people queuing for food, killing and raping prisoners and murdering children. He calls for people to stop obstructing his genocide for Israel.Orcas discuss Genocide-supporting and complicit Zionists. Donald Trump, Keith Starmer, David Lammy, Rachel Reeves, Angela Rayner and Wes Streeting are acknowledged as evil genocide-complicit and supporting cnuts.UK Labour Party Foreign Secretary David Lammy repeatedly heckled at a speech to the Fabian Society over his and the Labour Party’s support for and complicity in Israel’s genocide of Gaza.
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Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and President Donald Trump depart the State Dining Room of the White House following a press conference in Washington, DC on September 29, 2025. [Stringer – Anadolu Agency]
You will meet Benjamin Netanyahu. Cameras will flash. Words will be exchanged in polished rooms, polished suits, polished lies. You will talk about “security,” “alliances,” “regional stability,” and all the hollow, sterile phrases that sanitize horror and suffocate truth.
But I want to talk to you about tents.
Not metaphorical tents. Not symbolic tents. Not poetic tents. Real tents. Fabric huts. Plastic roofs. Human shelters. The kind of tents that hang between life and death.
In Gaza, rain does not fall. It assaults. It slashes. It invades. It turns the ground into a grave of mud and disease. Children are sleeping in rags under tarps shredded by storms. Infants wake screaming, not from nightmares, but because their bodies are soaked in sewage. Mothers hold babies wrapped in blankets sodden with foul water and human waste. They whisper prayers into the night air that smells of death. Wind tears at canvas walls while hunger gnaws at their bones.
And the world shrugs.
We were told Palestinian families would receive tents and caravans with every agreement, every deal, every negotiation Israel struck with Hamas. Promised. Documented. Repeated. Lied about.
Those caravans are there. They exist. They stand mere kilometers away — pristine, dry, safe — imprisoned by checkpoints and political indifference. They are not being delivered because the suffering of Palestinians has become a bargaining chip. A tool. A punishment.
And while two million human beings live in filth, drowning in misery, freezing in cruel winter wind, you are planning to build a ballroom. Marble floors. Crystal chandeliers. Velvet drapes. A palace to ego while children cough blood in swamp water.
America — the nation that once claimed to be a moral compass — now walks willingly into contradiction so obscene it cannot stand upright.
Has the United States truly fallen this low? Has its heart calcified past redemption? Has the “shining city on a hill” dimmed into a glittering tomb?
Mr Trump, Netanyahu promised 600 aid trucks per day. Not as generosity. As a necessity. As a minimum survival. Some days now, there are barely 120 trucks — if Israel allows them at all. Hunger swells. Hospitals collapse. Food rots behind borders while stomachs collapse inward.
You will sit across from Netanyahu. You will look him in the eye.
Will you speak? Or will you bow?
Are you afraid of angering him? To risk access? To disturb the sacrosanct theater of political allegiance? Is the relationship that fragile? Is your courage that conditional? Or is Palestinian suffering simply beneath the dignity of conversation?
History will remember the lie that civilization tells itself: that this is complicated. It is not. It is brutal. It is deliberate. It is man-made.
Do you know what the Greeks once called Arab desert tribes? Saracens — people of the tents.
Look at Gaza now. Zionism has not merely dispossessed Palestinians. It has hurled them two thousand years back into history, stripped them of walls, roofs, identity, security, dignity — and left them to rot in filth that only war and cowardice can create.
But do not romanticize these tents. These are not proud desert shelters. These tents are soaked in excrement. Their beds drip with disease. Their blankets stink of rot. This is not poverty.This is engineered humiliation. This is political cruelty masquerading as policy.
And so I ask you, not as a partisan, not as a critic, but as a man addressing another man whose decisions will echo long after his voice fades:
You live in gilded spaces — towers, mansions, palaces of marble and polished gold. Your life is wrapped in velvet. Gaza is wrapped in sores. And yet, the lives trapped in those tents are no less human than the ones who dine in your ballrooms.
They are pleading for one million tents and 600 caravans. Not tomorrow. Not next month. Now. Their children do not have the luxury of political delay. Their lungs are drowning. Their bones are thinning. Their hope is cracking.
Will you order those caravans through? Will you pressure Netanyahu to open the gates? Will you let those shelters roll forward instead of rotting behind barriers of arrogance and calculation?
Or will you remain silent and let winter finish the work that bombs began?
You have been handed a moment history rarely grants: the power to choose compassion over alliance, humanity over political comfort, moral action over moral collapse.
Redeem something. Redeem anything. Redeem at least one shred of the idea that America can still mean something beyond brute power and selective grief.
Do not tell the world America is strong. Show it is capable of mercy. Do not boast of greatness. Demonstrate decency.
Let the convoys through. Let the tents rise. Let children sleep dry for once. Let the name “American” mean rescue rather than ruin.
The Palestinians have screamed for decades into a deafening world. Today they scream again:
The views expressed in this article belong to the author and do not necessarily reflect the editorial policy of Middle East Monitor.
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Keir Starmer objects to criticism of the IDF. He asks how could anyone object to them starving people to death, forced marches like the Nazis did, bombing Gaza’s hospitals and universities, mass-murdering journalists, healthworkers and starving people queuing for food, killing and raping prisoners and murdering children. He calls for people to stop obstructing his genocide for Israel.Orcas discuss Genocide-supporting and complicit Zionists. Donald Trump, Keith Starmer, David Lammy, Rachel Reeves, Angela Rayner and Wes Streeting are acknowledged as evil genocide-complicit and supporting cnuts.Vote Labour for Genocide.
Siân Berry has a long history in politics and success was sweet when she took the Brighton seat. Photograph: Ian West/PA
Since Zack Polanski took over as leader, the party has doubled its membership and its four MPs want to take on Reform’s anger and build community spirit
“Someone has to be out there making the narrative for social security. Someone has to fight the corrosive attitudes to people on benefits,” says Siân Berry, who has just finished her first year as a Green MP in the House of Commons.
She is speaking to the Guardian in her Brighton constituency office, formerly occupied by the legendary Caroline Lucas who flew a lone flag as the only member of parliament for the Green party for 14 years.
Now, however, there are four MPs including Berry, battling together, she says, to hold the space for the left at a moment when it feels the far right has hypnotised the entire political body. “Often Adrian [Ramsay, MP for Waveney Valley] is the only one bringing up animal welfare in Defra questions, or Carla [Denyer, MP for Bristol Central] will be the only person arguing for a refugee’s right to work to the Home Office.” They have all, at different times, been the only party to raise the need for taxes on extreme wealth.
“Caroline was a lone voice in parliament,” she says. ‘But there are four of us so we can share responsibilities. We each shadow six government departments.” Berry’s portfolio covers crime and policing, justice, transport, work and pensions, culture, media and sport and democratic standards. “We absolutely have to be ready if an issue comes up. There are some issues where if a Green isn’t in the chamber asking a question, that question won’t be asked.
‘There are four of us so we can share responsibilities’: from left, Siân Berry, Carla Denyer, Adrian Ramsay and Ellie Chowns. Photograph: Ian West/PA
…
Most of all, Berry longs to see strong action on climate. “The climate situation is awful. A two degree rise is within sight. We are on a knife-edge of whether we can protect this ecosystem. It’s our only home.”
Nigel Farage urges you to ignore facts and reality and be a climate science denier like him and his Deputy Richard Tice. He says that Reform UK has received £Millions and £Millions from the fossil fuel industry to promote climate denial and destroy the planet.Neo-Fascist Climate Science Denier Donald Trump says Burn, Baby, Burn.
