Gazans in Egypt reject displacement, grapple with decision when to go home
Gazans in Egypt reject displacement, grapple with decision when to go home/node/2588862/middle-east
Gazans in Egypt reject displacement, grapple with decision when to go home
An Egyptian medic cares for a young Palestinian patient evacuated from Gaza through the Rafah crossing, as they arrive at El-Arish General Hospital in Egypt’s north eastern Sinai province on February 1, 2025. (AFP)
Gazans in Egypt reject displacement, grapple with decision when to go home
“We, the people of Gaza, can only live in Gaza,” a displaced Gazan said
“If they give us residencies, the cause will be lost,” she added
Updated 03 February 2025
Reuters
CAIRO: Weeks into the ceasefire in Gaza, thousands of Palestinians who left for neighboring Egypt are grappling with the question of when they might go home, though they reject the prospect of a mass displacement proposed by US President Donald Trump.
“A lot of people are torn, and I am one of them,” said Shorouk, who earns a living selling Palestinian food in Cairo, going by the name Gaza Girl. “Do you choose to go back and sit in the destruction and a place that still needs to be reconstructed or stay and go back when it is reconstructed?“
Whether or not she is able to go home soon, she does not want people like her to be accepted as residents outside Palestinian land.
“We, the people of Gaza, can only live in Gaza,” she said. “If they give us residencies, the cause will be lost.”
A proposal by Trump that much of the population of Gaza be cleared out and residents sent en masse to Egypt and Jordan has been universally denounced across the Arab world as a form of ethnic cleansing.
“You’re talking about a million and half people, and we just clean out that whole thing,” Trump said. Asked if it would be a temporary or long term solution, he said: “Could be either.”
Egypt says it will never participate in the mass displacement of Palestinians, which President Abdel Fattah El-Sisi described as an “act of injustice.”
But there are already about 100,000 Palestinians in Egypt, who say they do not know how or when they will be able to return.
During the war in Gaza, the border was mostly sealed and the vast majority of the 2.3 million residents were made homeless and forced into temporary shelters within the territory.
There were however months when some people were permitted to leave, including Palestinians with foreign passports, their close relatives or severely ill patients evacuated for humanitarian reasons.
Most have no long-term permission to stay in Egypt and view their stays as temporary, surviving on small trade or savings. The ceasefire agreement that paused the fighting in January has yet to resolve their fate.
Some say they will return as soon as they have a chance.
“There is nothing better than one’s country and land,” said Hussien Farahat, a father of two.
But others say the personal decision is more complicated, without a home to go back to.
“Even if the war were over, we still do not know our fate and nobody mentioned those stranded in Cairo. Are we going back or what will happen to us? And if we go back, what will happen to us? Our houses are gone,” said Abeer Kamal, who has lived in Cairo since Nov. 2023 and sells handmade bags with her sisters.
“There is nothing, not my house, or my family, or siblings, nothing,” she said.
Israel launched its assault on Gaza after Hamas fighters stormed Israeli towns, killing 1,200 people and capturing more than 250 hostages, according to Israeli tallies. Since then, Israel’s campaign has killed more than 46,000 Palestinians, according to health authorities there, driven most Gazans from their homes and laid swathes of the territory to waste.
While Gazans in Egypt may vary in their personal plans, all said they reject any proposal by Trump to clear large numbers of Palestinians from Gaza.
“This is our land and it’s not his to control us,” said Fares Mahmoud, another Gazan in Cairo. “It’s our land, we leave it and go back to it when we want.”
Palestinian Authority condemns Israel’s approval of key West Bank settlement
E1 project has no purpose other than to sabotage political solution, rights group says
Updated 22 sec ago
AP AFP
TEL AVIV: The Palestinian Authority has slammed Israel’s approval of a key settlement project in the occupied West Bank, saying it undermined the chances of a two-state solution.
The approval of the project in the area known as E1 “fragments ... geographic and demographic unity, entrenching the division of the occupied West Bank into isolated areas and cantons that are disconnected from one another, turning them into something akin to real prisons,” the Palestinian Foreign Ministry said in a statement.
Israel gave final approval Wednesday for the controversial settlement project that would effectively cut the territory in two, and that Palestinians and rights groups say could destroy hopes for a future Palestinian state.
Settlement development in E1, an open tract of land east of Jerusalem, has been under consideration for more than two decades, but was frozen due to US pressure during previous administrations.
The international community overwhelmingly considers Israeli settlement construction in the West Bank to be illegal and an obstacle to peace.
Far-right Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich, a former settler leader, cast the approval as a rebuke to Western countries that announced their plans to recognize a Palestinian state in recent weeks.
“The Palestinian state is being erased from the table not with slogans but with actions,” he said on Wednesday.
“Every settlement, every neighborhood, every housing unit is another nail in the coffin of this dangerous idea.”
A German government spokesperson commenting on the announcement said that settlement construction violates international law and “hinders a negotiated two-state solution and an end to the Israeli occupation of the West Bank.”
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu rejects the idea of a Palestinian state alongside Israel and has vowed to maintain open-ended control over the occupied West Bank, annexed east Jerusalem, and the war-ravaged Gaza Strip — territories Israel seized in the 1967 war that the Palestinians want for their state.
Israel’s expansion of settlements is part of an increasingly dire reality for Palestinians in the occupied West Bank as the world’s attention focuses on the war in Gaza.
There have been marked increases in attacks by settlers on Palestinians, evictions from Palestinian towns, Israeli military operations, and checkpoints that choke freedom of movement, as well as several Palestinian attacks on Israelis.
More than 700,000 Israeli settlers now live in the West Bank and East Jerusalem.
The location of E1 is significant because it is one of the last geographical links between the major West Bank cities of Ramallah, in the north, and Bethlehem, in the south.
The two cities are 22 km apart, but Palestinians traveling between them must take a wide detour and pass through multiple Israeli checkpoints, spending hours on the journey.
The hope was that, in an eventual Palestinian state, the region would serve as a direct link between the cities.
“The settlement in E1 has no purpose other than to sabotage a political solution,” said Peace Now, an organization that tracks settlement expansion in the West Bank.
“While the consensus among our friends in the world is to strive for peace and a two-state solution, a government that long ago lost the people’s trust is undermining the national interest, and we are all paying the price.”
If the process proceeds quickly, infrastructure work in E1 could begin within the next few months, and construction of homes could commence around a year later. The plan includes around 3,500 apartments that would surround the existing settlement of Maale Adumim. Smotrich also hailed the approval, during the same meeting, of 350 homes for the settlement of Ashael near Hebron.
Israel’s government is dominated by religious and ultranationalist politicians, like Smotrich, with close ties to the settlement movement.
The finance minister has been granted Cabinet-level authority over settlement policies and vowed to double the settler population in the West Bank.
How religious extremism and settler attacks are eroding the Christian presence in Israel and the West Bank
Christian communities in Israel and the West Bank report increasing harassment and attacks by extremist settlers
Church leaders warn that unchecked hostility against religious minorities undermines centuries of coexistence
Updated 18 min 26 sec ago
GABRIELE MALVISI
LONDON: Harassment, violence and displacement have become a daily reality for Palestinians across the occupied West Bank, where attacks by Israeli settlers — allegedly with the protection or tacit approval of the army and government — have spread unchecked.
Religious minorities, including the West Bank’s various Christian denominations, have not been spared amid the violence. On Aug. 7, settlers illegally seized land belonging to the Greek Orthodox Monastery of Abba Gerasimos of the Jordan in Jericho.
Just days earlier, another group stormed Taybeh, the only entirely Christian village in the West Bank, home to Greek Orthodox, Melkite and Catholic residents. Masked and armed, the assailants reportedly set vehicles ablaze, sprayed graffiti and released livestock.
Settler abuse is rarely prosecuted by Israeli authorities. (Reuters)
It was the second such raid in as many weeks. A fortnight earlier, settlers had torched the ancient Church of Saint George and desecrated its adjoining graveyard.
“They have always done this around the village, but nowadays they dare to go inside,” Buthina Khoury, a Greek Orthodox filmmaker who grew up in Taybeh, told Arab News. “My cousin the other day opened her window and she saw the settler just outside her house, just in the backyard of her house.”
Although nobody was killed in these raids, attacks such as these reflect a pattern of escalating settler abuse that is rarely prosecuted by Israeli authorities.
The same week, Israel’s Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich approved a highly controversial plan to advance 3,401 new housing units in the E1 settlement, a move that would split the West Bank in two and sever it from East Jerusalem.
These settlements are deemed illegal under international law and would make any future contiguous Palestinian state even harder to realize.
The move, widely condemned by the international community, risks deepening an already volatile situation, further entrenching a dynamic in which nationalist and colonialist ideologies are intertwined with Jewish religious extremism.
“The whole situation has been very, very critical and very sensitive, and what’s happening in the rest of Palestine, it affects Taybeh as well,” said Khoury. “They are trying to turn our life into misery.”
For decades, Taybeh — a village mentioned in the Gospel of John where Jesus is said to have stayed before his entry into Jerusalem and eventual death on the cross — had been largely spared from settler violence. That is now changing.
Recent attacks have drawn international figures to the village, including Roman Catholic Cardinal Pierbattista Pizzaballa and US Ambassador to Israel Mike Huckabee. But Khoury says such visits do little to change the reality on the ground.
Parish priest of the Church of the Holy Family, father Gabriele Romanelli, receives medical attention. (Reuters)
“What happened in Taybeh is the least compared to what happened to the villages and towns nearby,” she said, adding that such visits “do nothing” but “show a fake solidarity.”
Christian minorities such as Khoury’s, arguably more at risk than any other Palestinian community, have steadily dwindled in the West Bank.
In 1922, in what was then Mandatory Palestine, Christians made up about 11 percent of the population. Today they account for less than 1 percent. Bethlehem, once 85 percent Christian, is now home to just 10 percent.
A 2020 study by the Palestinian Center for Policy and Survey Research and the Philos Project found that political instability, residency permit restrictions for married couples and clergy, frustration with the stalled peace process and economic hardship were drivers of this decline.
About 40 percent of Christian respondents also reported feeling discriminated against by fellow Palestinians.
Khoury said the situation has shifted dramatically since the Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas-led attack on Israel triggered the war in Gaza. Violence has simultaneously escalated in the West Bank, and Christians are being used to fuel a narrative of division.
Indeed, Khoury said Israeli policies had been designed to drive a wedge between religious groups. “It’s the policy of every occupier,” she said. “We Palestinian Christians or Palestinian Muslims — we don’t feel separate from each other.”
Regardless of any deliberate effort to divide Palestinians along these lines, Khoury said settlers are not targeting Christians solely for their religious identity, but rather aiming to purge the West Bank of any and all non-Jewish peoples.
A recent report by the Rossing Center for Education and Dialogue documented 111 cases of harassment in 2024, with physical assaults being the most common. (Reuters)
The UN has recorded a sharp rise in settler violence this year. In the first half of 2025 alone, it documented in excess of 700 attacks — more than triple the number for all of 2023.
Between Jan. 1 and Aug. 11, Israeli authorities also “punitively demolished or sealed 23 homes and four other structures,” displacing about 140 people, including 57 children — the highest level of displacement in such a short period since 2009.
The monthly average of Palestinians injured by settlers also doubled in June and July to about 100, compared with 49 per month in the first five months of the year.
But the pressures faced by Christians are not confined to the occupied territories. Within Israel itself, Christian communities — long perceived as relatively secure — are reporting a surge in harassment and hostility.
“In recent years, the Christian community in the Holy Land has faced a rise in violence and intimidation, targeting both clergy and faithful,” Bishop William Shomali, patriarchal vicar for Jerusalem and Palestine, told Arab News.
“These incidents reflect a growing climate of hostility that threatens peaceful coexistence and religious freedom.”
Shomali, a Catholic who grew up in the Christian-majority town of Beit Sahour near Bethlehem, said members of the clergy had been spat on by Jewish extremists while walking in religious attire or during processions in Jerusalem’s Old City.
The UN has recorded a sharp rise in settler violence this year. (Reuters)
Church walls and properties have been vandalized with hateful graffiti in Hebrew. Often filmed and shared online, these acts, he said, “express clear contempt for the Christian presence in the Holy City.”
Attacks against Christians in Israel have risen sharply in recent months, shaped in part by the post-Oct. 7 political climate.
A recent report by the Rossing Center for Education and Dialogue — a Jerusalem-based interreligious organization promoting ties between Jews, Christians and Muslims — documented 111 cases of harassment in 2024, with physical assaults being the most common.
The figure, almost certainly an undercount given the community’s reluctance to report such incidents, marks a 30 percent increase compared with 2023.
“The problem is much bigger and wider than that,” Hannah Bendcowsky, the center’s program director, told Arab News.
“We’re talking about the legitimizing of violence toward minorities, the normalization of violence and anti-Christian attacks, the lack of condemnation from authorities, and the lack of proper reaction from police forces.”
These actions, she said, not only endanger the Christian community but have long-term consequences for Israeli society as a whole.
While Israel’s Christian population grew slightly in 2023 — by about 0.6 percent — Bendcowsky warned that persistent harassment is fueling what she called a “slow emigration.”
Bishop Shomali described an “emotional shift” since Oct. 7 that has provoked a “noticeable increase in hatred and mistrust” across the region. (Reuters)
The community numbers about 180,000 people — around 80 percent of them Arab Christians. Yet they experience what she described as a “double minority” status — marginalized as both Christians and Palestinians within Israeli society.
“The main question is, when an Israeli meets a Palestinian Christian, what do they see? A Palestinian or a Christian? Or I should be more accurate. When they meet a Palestinian Christian, when do they see him as a Christian and when do they see him as a Palestinian?”
Bendcowsky said longstanding religious tensions have been deliberately instrumentalized by Israeli leaders since Oct. 7, deepening polarization and mistrust that extend beyond minorities to affect Israeli Jewish communities as well.
She emphasized the need for a broader contextual understanding of these incidents to fully grasp the wider dynamics affecting the Christian community, whereby some attacks can be deemed anti-Palestinian while others distinctly anti-Christian.
“We do relate to the attacks of settlers, but I would say that it’s a different kind of attack,” she said.
“The harassment we see in Jerusalem and in Israel against Christians is anti-Christian. So it’s not because they are Palestinian, but it’s because they’re Christian. And most of the people being attacked are not Palestinians. They’re foreign Christians.
“While the incident in Taybeh is not anti-Christian per se, it’s anti-Palestinian. And this is part of a wider phenomena that, to my understanding, is ignored by the international community.”
Khoury said settlers are not targeting Christians solely for their religious identity, but rather aiming to purge the West Bank of any and all non-Jewish peoples.(Reuters)
Bishop Shomali described an “emotional shift” since Oct. 7 that has provoked a “noticeable increase in hatred and mistrust” across the region.
“What used to be a tense coexistence has now turned into a more hostile and polarized atmosphere,” he said. “People express fear, sadness and a sense of loss — not only of physical safety but also of hope for peaceful relations.”
While much remains to be done to address the situation in the West Bank, some local efforts have emerged to curb harassment in Israel. Jewish volunteers have begun accompanying Christian clergy and pilgrims during major processions in Jerusalem, documenting incidents of spitting or other abuse and reporting them to the police.
“There is a growing sense that the Israeli police are now more seriously committed to addressing specific issues, particularly the spitting incidents and anti-Christian graffiti in Jerusalem,” said Shomali.
However, he cautioned that while these measures are “meaningful and appreciated,” they remain limited in scope, addressing the problem within Israel without tackling the broader context that has fostered instability and mistrust for decades.
For Shomali, the heart of the issue lies deeper than religious tensions.
While Israel’s Christian population grew slightly in 2023 — by about 0.6 percent — Bendcowsky warned that persistent harassment is fueling what she called a “slow emigration.” (AFP)
“Interreligious dialogue, though valuable, cannot by itself resolve the deeper and more complex issue of the land’s ownership,” he said.
“The core of the conflict lies in two national narratives — Palestinian and Jewish — that are often contradictory and deeply rooted in historical, political and religious claims.
“Religion is not just a spiritual identity in this context; it is interwoven into each narrative, which makes compromise particularly difficult to achieve.”
NEW YORK CITY: Daesh remains an active and dangerous presence in the Middle East, the UN warned on Wednesday, as the group works to rebuild its operations in Syria and Iraq, even after the loss of senior leaders.
Vladimir Voronkov, the UN’s counterterrorism chief, told the Security Council that Daesh has maintained its operational capacity in the region and continues to exploit instability, especially in the Badia region of Syria and parts of the country under the control of Hayat Tahrir Al-Sham.
“Daesh continues to exploit security gaps, engage in covert operations and incite sectarian tensions in Syria,” Voronkov said as he presented Secretary-General Antonio Guterres’s 21st report on the threat posed by the terrorist organization.
The group also remains active in Iraq, he added, where it seeks to destabilize local authorities and reclaim influence.
The humanitarian and security situations in northeastern Syria remain “deeply concerning,” Voronkov warned, particularly in the camps and detention facilities that hold suspected terrorists and their families.
“The secretary-general’s concern about stockpiles of weapons falling into the hands of terrorists has, unfortunately, materialized,” he said.
In Afghanistan, Daesh-Khorasan continues to pose one of the most serious terrorist threats to Central Asia and beyond, through ongoing attacks against civilians, minority groups and foreign nationals, while leveraging dissatisfaction with the de facto authorities.
Despite the ongoing threats in the Middle East, Africa remains the region experiencing the highest intensity of Daesh-related activity, Voronkov said, with violence escalating in West Africa and the Sahel.
There has been a resurgence of Daesh in the Greater Sahara, while Daesh-West Africa Province has emerged as a key source of propaganda that is attracting foreign fighters, primarily from within the region.
In Libya, arrests have revealed the logistical and financial networks linked to the group and connected to the Sahel. In Somalia, a large-scale Daesh attack in Puntland early this year involving foreign fighters prompted a military counteroffensive that killed 200 militants and resulted in more than 150 arrests.
“Though weakened, Daesh still benefits from regional support networks,” Voronkov said.
Assistant Secretary-General Natalia Gherman, executive director of the Counter-Terrorism Committee’s Executive Directorate, or CTED, echoed the concerns. She noted that Daesh-Somalia’s role as a global logistical hub has been growing recently, though counteroffensives had degraded some of its operational capabilities.
Daesh continues to exploit instability in Africa, she added, where more than half of the world’s terrorism-related fatalities now occur. In the Lake Chad Basin region, for example, the group has received foreign money, drones, and expertise on improvised explosive devices.
Gherman also highlighted the growing use by Daesh of emerging technologies and financial innovations, as terrorist groups increasingly leverage encrypted platforms, artificial intelligence, and cross-border financial systems to raise funds, spread propaganda and recruit new members.
In response to these evolving threats, CTED has visited countries across Europe and Africa, including Somalia, Chad, Cameroon, Hungary and Malta, to assess local capacities and provide tailored support.
The EU-UN Global Terrorism Threats Facility has helped implement legislative reforms and capacity building in countries such as Iraq, Kenya, Kyrgyzstan, Nigeria and Tajikistan.
Voronkov urged member states to invest more in long-term strategies for prevention, rather than focusing only on killing or capturing the leaders of terrorist groups. He said effective counterterrorism efforts must address the root causes of radicalization, while complying with the requirements of international law.
He raised concerns in particular about detention camps in northeastern Syria, where tens of thousands of people, mostly women and children, continue to be held in unsafe and undignified conditions, risking further radicalization.
Gherman said that CTED is helping states address such challenges through the adoption of principles for tackling the use of drones, financial tech and artificial intelligence for terrorism purposes.
Despite the geopolitical and resource-related constraints, both of the officials emphasized the need for sustained international collaboration on the issue.
“The persistence of the threat posed by Daesh, despite national and international efforts, underscores the urgency of sustained global counterterrorism cooperation,” said Voronkov.
Israel approves major West Bank settlement project
Critics say the settlement would effectively cut the West Bank in two, undermining hopes for a contiguous Palestinian state with east Jerusalem as its capital
Updated 20 August 2025
AFP
JERUSALEM: Israel approved a major settlement project on Wednesday in an area of the occupied West Bank that the international community has warned threatens the viability of a future Palestinian state.
Israel has long had ambitions to build on the roughly 12-square-kilometer (five-square-mile) parcel known as E1 just east of Jerusalem, but the plan had been stalled for years amid international opposition.
Critics say the settlement would effectively cut the West Bank in two, undermining hopes for a contiguous Palestinian state with east Jerusalem as its capital.
Last week, Israel’s far-right Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich backed plans to build around 3,400 homes on the ultra-sensitive tract of land, which lies between Jerusalem and the Israeli settlement of Maale Adumim.
“I am pleased to announce that just a short while ago, the civil administration approved the planning for the construction of the E1 neighborhood,” the mayor of Maale Adumim, Guy Yifrach, said in a statement Wednesday.
The Ramallah-based Palestinian Authority swiftly slammed the move.
“This undermines the chances of implementing the two-state solution, establishing a Palestinian state on the ground, and fragments its geographic and demographic unity,” the PA’s foreign ministry said in a statement.
It added the move would entrench “division of the occupied West Bank into isolated areas and cantons that are disconnected from one another, turning them into something akin to real prisons, where movement is only possible through Israeli checkpoints and under the terror of armed settler militias.”
All of Israel’s settlements in the West Bank, occupied since 1967, are considered illegal under international law, regardless of whether they have Israeli planning permission.
Israel heavily restricts the movement of West Bank Palestinians, who must obtain permits from authorities to travel through checkpoints to cross into east Jerusalem or Israel.
King Abdullah II of Jordan on Wednesday also affirmed his country’s rejection of the E1 project, saying “the two-state solution is the only way to achieve a just and comprehensive peace.”
Violence in the West Bank has soared since the October 7, 2023 Hamas attack on Israel that triggered the Gaza war.
Since then, Israeli troops and settlers have killed at least 971 Palestinians in the West Bank, including many militants, according to health ministry figures.
Over the same period, at least 36 Israelis, including security forces, have been killed in Palestinian attacks or during Israeli military operations, according to official figures.
UN chief Antonio Guterres warned last week that constructing Israeli homes in the E1 area would “put an end to” hopes for a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
Aviv Tatarsky, a researcher at Ir Amim, an Israeli NGO focusing on Jerusalem within the context of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, also condemned the move.
“Today’s approval demonstrates how determined Israel is in pursuing what Minister Smotrich has described as a strategic program to bury the possibility of a Palestinian state and to effectively annex the West Bank,” he said.
“This is a conscious Israeli choice to implement an apartheid regime,” he added, calling on the international community to take urgent and effective measures against the move.
Far-right Israeli ministers have in recent months openly called for Israel’s annexation of the territory.
Israeli NGO Peace Now, which monitors settlement activity in the West Bank, said last week that infrastructure work in E1 could begin within a few months, and housing construction within about a year.
Excluding east Jerusalem, the West Bank is home to around three million Palestinians, as well as about 500,000 Israeli settlers.
Aid groups say shelter materials are still not entering Gaza
Aid organizations say Israel had in effect been blocking the delivery of materials for shelters for nearly six months
“The United Nations and our partners have...not been able to bring in shelter materials following the Israeli announcement,” OCHA spokesperson Jens Laerke said
Updated 20 August 2025
AFP
GENEVA: International aid groups say they have not yet been able to deliver shelter materials to Gaza despite Israeli authorities saying they have lifted restrictions on such supplies, and warn that further delays could cause more Palestinian deaths.
Aid organizations say Israel had in effect been blocking the delivery of materials for shelters for nearly six months, with tent poles previously listed among items Israeli authorities considered could have a military as well as civilian use.
With international concern over the plight of Palestinians mounting as the war in Gaza continues, Israel announced measures last month to let more aid into Gaza and said on Saturday that it would start allowing shelter materials in from the next day.
But officials from five aid groups, including UN agencies, told Reuters that shelter materials needed by large numbers of displaced Palestinians were still not reaching Gaza and blamed Israeli bureaucratic hurdles.
“The United Nations and our partners have...not been able to bring in shelter materials following the Israeli announcement,” the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), spokesperson Jens Laerke said.
“There’s a set of impediments that still needs to be addressed, including Israeli customs clearance.”
CARE International, ShelterBox and the Norwegian Refugee Council also said they had not yet received any authorization to deliver shelter materials. Another international NGO, which declined to be identified, said it had been unable to deliver such supplies but was trying to get clearance.
Over 1.3 million Gazans lack tents, the United Nations said this month, and more people are expected to be displaced by an Israeli operation to seize Gaza City.
COGAT, the Israeli military agency that coordinates aid, did not immediately respond to Reuters questions. It has previously said it invests considerable efforts to ensure aid reaches Gaza and has denied restricting supplies.
After nearly two years of war, many displaced Palestinians are living in the rubble of their homes or in tents.
“Life in the tent is no life at all...There’s no proper bathroom, not even a decent place to sit. We end up sitting in the street, suffocating in the heat,” 55-year-old Ibrahim Tabassi said in the southern Gazan city of Khan Younis.
He shares his cramped tent, made from tarpaulin sheets and scrap metal, with nine other family members. Clothes and pots hang inside.
Another Gaza resident, Sanaa Abu Jamous, said that she, like many other Gazans, had been using the same tattered tent throughout the war.
“My tent is extremely worn out,” she said.
Deliveries via Kerem Shalom crossing
Israel said on Saturday that deliveries of materials for shelters would be allowed via the Kerem Shalom Crossing with Israel but would have to undergo security inspections.
The Red Cross told Reuters it had received permission from COGAT to bring in shelter materials from what is known as the Jordanian corridor to Kerem Shalom, but that many challenges remain.
CARE International said it had received no confirmation that the change in policy had been enacted.
The Norwegian Refugee Council, a humanitarian organization, said it had applied for permission to deliver 3,000 tents across Gaza, including the north, but had not yet received a reply.
Many aid groups are resisting Israeli demands — under measures imposed in March — to register because it means disclosing personal information about Palestinian staff.
COGAT says the mechanism is a security screening intended to ensure aid goes directly to the population rather than to the Palestinian militant group Hamas.
ShelterBox’s regional director, Haroon Altaf, said granting permission to only a select number of aid groups would not meet demand for shelter materials.
“If it’s only a handful of organizations that can bring shelter aid in, it doesn’t really change much and it’s deeply concerning. People are going to die because of it,” he said.
