Everyone knew what was coming. But there was little the inhabitants of the tent cities that crowd the shore of southern Gaza could do as the storm approached. Sabah al-Breem, 62, was sitting with one of her daughters and several grandchildren in their current home – a makeshift construction of tarpaulins and salvaged wood – when the wind and the driving rain broke across Gaza last week.
“Everything collapsed … We repaired our shelter but in the night it fell down again under the heavy rain. All our belongings were soaked. The day the winds blew was a black day for us,” said Breem, originally from Khan Younis but displaced multiple times since the start of the war in October 2023.
