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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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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.
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Supporters gather with banners and slogans outside the Royal Courts of Justice while the judicial review of the Palestine Action ban under the Terrorism Act continues inside the building in London, United Kingdom on November 26, 2025. [Zeynep Demir – Anadolu Agency]
United Nations experts have called on Britain to protect the lives and rights of detained pro-Palestine activists who are on hunger strike.
In a written statement issued on Sunday, the UN experts said that eight pro-Palestine activists imprisoned in Britain have been on an open-ended hunger strike since 2 November.
They expressed deep concern about the detainees’ lives and their fundamental rights.
“We call on Britain to protect the lives and rights of detained pro-Palestine hunger strikers,” the statement said.
The experts noted that “Hunger strike is often a measure of last resort by people who believe that their rights to protest and effective remedy have been exhausted.”
The statement warned that the health of the hunger strikers has deteriorated significantly as they enter their second month without food. It stated that they face “critical risk of serious complications, including organ failure, irreversible neurological damage, cardiac arrhythmias and death.”
The UN experts urged British authorities to “ensure timely access to emergency and hospital care when clinically indicated, refrain from actions that may amount to pressure or retaliation, and respect medical ethics.”
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Genocide denier and Current UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer is quoted that he supports Zionism without qualification. He also confirms that UK air force support has been essential in Israel’s mass-murdering genocide. Includes URLs https://www.declassifieduk.org/keir-starmers-100-spy-flights-over-gaza-in-support-of-israel/ and https://youtu.be/O74hZCKKdpAKeir 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.
Original article by republished form Common Dreams under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0).
Healthcare workers and allies rally to demand the release of Dr. Hussam Abu Safiya and all Palestinian healthcare workers held in Israeli jails, in New York City, on January 6, 2025. (Photo by Mostafa Bassim/Anadolu via Getty Images)
“We won’t forget him nor the 360+ health workers Israel has abducted from Gaza since October 2023,” said CodePink.
Ahead of Saturday’s one-year anniversary of Israel abducting Dr. Hussam Abu Safiya from the Gaza hospital he ran, advocates demanded the release the scores of health workers still imprisoned by Israeli occupation forces.
“One year ago, Dr. Hussam Abu Safiya was abducted by the Israeli military along with dozens of other medical staff during a horrific raid on the Kamal Adwan Hospital in Gaza,” Dr. Yipeng Ge, a member of Doctors Against Genocide, said Friday on social media. “Free Hussam Abu Safiya. Free them all.”
Activist Petra Schurenhofer said on X: “It’s been a year since Israel abducted and illegally detained Dr Hussam Abu Safiya. And since then he has been languishing in an Israeli jail, being subjected to cruel and inhumane treatment. Don’t forget him. And don’t stop calling for his release.”
Dr. Hussam Abu Safiya was abducted by the IOF from Kamal Adwan Hospital one year ago this week.Israel has detained & tortured Dr. Abu Safiya for one whole year.We won't forget him nor the 360+ health workers Israel has abducted from Gaza since October 2023.
Abu Safiya, the 52-year-old director of Kamal Adwan Hospital, was seized on December 27, 2024 as Israel Defense Forces (IDF) troops continued their yearlong siege and raids on the facility in Beit Lahia, northern Gaza. The IDF claimed without evidence that Kamal Adwan—the last major functioning hospital in northern Gaza at the time—was a Hamas command center.
During a previous Israeli attack on Kamal Adwan, Abu Safiya’s 15-year-old son was killed in a drone strike. Abu Safiya was seriously wounded in a separate drone attack that left six pieces of shrapnel in his leg.
After his capture, Abu Safiya was first jailed at the notorious Sde Teiman prison in Israel’s Negev Desert—where dozens of detainees have died and where torture, rape, and other abuses have been reported—and then Ofer Prison in the illegally occupied West Bank.
Abu Safiya said he has endured torture by his captors—including beatings with batons and electric shocks—and suffered severe weight loss, broken ribs, and other injuries, for which he was allegedly denied adequate medical care.
A year has passed since the detention of my father, In this white coat, he walked alone amidst death, destruction, and in front of tanks—not because he was fearless, but because his oath and his humanity were greater than any fear. He refused to abandon the children and the… pic.twitter.com/8NtuIGBeYf
— Dr. Hussam Abu Safiya د.حسام أبو صفية (@HussamAbuSafiya) December 26, 2025
Israeli authorities deny these accusations. However, there have been many documented and otherwise credible reports of health and medical workers being tortured by Israeli forces—sometimes fatally, as in the case of Dr. Adnan al-Bursh, who headed the orthopedic department at al-Shifa Hospital in Gaza City.
Abu Safiya remains in Israeli custody, despite having not been charged with any crimes. Israeli courts have extended his detention multiple times under so-called “unlawful combatant” legal provisions.
In January, Abu Safiya’s mother died of a heart attack that MedGlobal, the Illinois-based nonprofit for which Abu Safiya worked as lead Gaza physician, attributed to “severe sadness” over her son’s plight.
According to United Nations agencies and other experts, Israeli forces have destroyed or damaged nearly all of Gaza’s hospitals in hundreds of attacks since the Hamas-led October 7, 2023 attack on Israel. More than 1,500 Palestinian health workers have been killed.
Last year, an independent United Nations commission found that “Israel has perpetrated a concerted policy to destroy Gaza’s healthcare system as part of a broader assault on Gaza, committing war crimes and the crime against humanity of extermination with relentless and deliberate attacks on medical personnel and facilities.”
Albina Abu Safiya, the imprisoned doctor’s wife, pleaded last week: “Save my husband before it is too late. His only ‘crime’ was saving the wounded and tending to the wounds of children.”
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.Genocide denier and Current UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer is quoted that he supports Zionism without qualification. He also confirms that UK air force support has been essential in Israel’s mass-murdering genocide. Includes URLs https://www.declassifieduk.org/keir-starmers-100-spy-flights-over-gaza-in-support-of-israel/ and https://youtu.be/O74hZCKKdpAOrcas 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.
