[News] Houses on the brink of collapse: Gaza’s winter turns resilience into a gamble

[Anti-Imperialist News]

 Reports <https://english.palinfo.com/category/reports/>
Houses on the brink of collapse: Gaza’s winter turns resilience into a
gamble

Sunday 28-December-2025

GAZA, (PIC)

In Gaza, danger does not stop at the limits of bombardment, nor does it end
when aircraft retreat from the sky. After more than a year of a devastating
war that reshaped geography and life, thousands of families are now
fighting a new battle inside what remains of their homes, amid cracked
walls and ceilings suspended over deep fissures, awaiting collapse at any
moment.

In neighborhoods whose features have been altered under the rubble, houses
are no longer safe havens but fragile structures, some missing half their
mass, others standing like exhausted bodies leaning on broken pillars.
Despite residents’ awareness of the scale of danger, these homes remain
inhabited because alternatives are nearly nonexistent, and leaving means
total homelessness.

Children here do not sleep in peace; they sleep staring at the cracks in
the ceiling, as if guarding it from falling. Mothers fear the sound of the
wind more than the night itself, and fathers do not just follow the news
bulletins, they watch the walls, touch them, read their silence, and try to
estimate how much time remains. Explosions have stopped in some areas, but
fear has not; it has moved from the sky into the homes.

Where do we go? A question without an answer

Beneath a residential building that previously suffered a direct strike
west of Khan Yunis, the Al-Haddad family, 14 members, live inside a
dilapidated apartment unfit for human habitation. The building lost its
upper floors, and what remains is classified by engineers as “unsafe,” yet
the family has nowhere else to go.

Akram Al-Haddad says they were forced to return to the apartment after
their homes were completely destroyed during the bombardment, “We know we
are risking our lives, but where do we go? There are no alternative homes,
no ability to rent a safe place, and all appeals have received no response.”

Stones fall from time to time, cold seeps in from every corner, and
rainwater easily finds its way inside. With every report of a similar house
collapsing in another neighborhood, children’s fear doubles and the burden
of waiting grows heavier.

These stories repeat with every weather system that reaches Gaza carrying
what it can of rain and storms, pushing hundreds of displaced families
living in tents to seek shelter in their collapse-prone homes after failing
to remain in tents flooded by water or uprooted by winds.

Human rights reports have documented that dozens of buildings across
various areas of the Gaza Strip were previously damaged by Israeli
bombardment and are on the verge of collapse. Yet families remain in them
“despite knowing the extent of their structural weakness,” seeing these
cracked buildings as a less dangerous option than staying in a tent that
offers no protection from cold or rain.

Half a house, half a life

The scene of the Al-Haddad family is not much different from the reality of
the Salameh family, whose home was destroyed in two stages, leaving only
part of the ground floor intact. In this narrow space lives Rowaida
Salameh, an 80-year-old woman with limited mobility, with her daughter
Khuloud. Rubble blocks the entrances, and destroyed rooms surround what
remains of the house, as if the place reminds them every moment of what
happened.

Khuloud says she fully understands the danger of staying and that engineers
warned them of the possibility of collapse, but she has no alternative, “No
mobile homes, no shelters, no source of income. Leaving means homelessness,
staying means danger.”

Among these families is Sumaya Nabhan from the Al-Rimal neighborhood, who
said she lives with her family inside a dangerously leaning building, “like
entering a slide in an amusement park” after their original home was
destroyed. She adds that she feels at every moment that the walls could
collapse over their heads.

That feeling turned into a tragic incident when, in the same neighborhood
where Nabhan lives, a wall of a house sheltering displaced people collapsed
due to strong winds and heavy rain, killing a Palestinian woman (30 years
old) after the wall fell onto her tent adjacent to the remains of the
destroyed building. Other tents in different areas of the Strip were
flooded or swept away by the harsh weather.

Before seeking refuge in cracked buildings, thousands of displaced people
lived in temporary, worn-out tents that, since last November, have
repeatedly been flooded or been blown away by strong winds and heavy rain,
forcing families out into the open amid cold weather.

Civil defense authorities have repeatedly warned against taking shelter in
collapse-prone homes, stressing that thousands of housing units in the
Strip have suffered serious partial damage rendering them unfit for
habitation. But these warnings collide with a harsh reality: no alternative
places, no building materials, and no ability to establish safe temporary
housing.

Numbers reveal the tragedy

The Government Media Office (GMO) in Gaza confirms that the tents spread
across displacement camps functioned as temporary shelters that are
fundamentally unfit for living, made of worn fabrics that do not protect
from rain or cold and lacking sanitation facilities and electricity.

Ismail Al-Thawabteh, GMO Director General, estimates that around 1.5
million people (approximately 288,000 families) have had their homes
destroyed by Israel.

Al-Thawabteh stated that the number of people living in official or
informal shelter camps is estimated at about 1,371,000, noting that roughly
620,000 people (120,000 families) live in homes on the verge of collapse,
exposing them to the risks of death and injury, especially during winter
due to rain and wind.

He estimates that about 48,000 people (9,000 families) live inside
governmental and official buildings, and notes that the number of tents
that entered the Gaza Strip since the start of the war 26 months ago
reached about 135,000 tents. However, 125,000 of them (93% of the total)
have deteriorated and gone out of service.

The official estimates that around 22,000 tents were damaged by rain and
winds accompanying recent weather systems over the short past period.

The humanitarian protocol, awaiting the worst

He explains that the tents that entered over the past two months, following
the implementation of the latest ceasefire agreement, reached nearly 20,000
tents, stressing that they are “absolutely insufficient, as Gaza urgently
needs 300,000 tents, and what has entered represents only 7% of the
immediate actual need.”

He continues, “When tents deteriorate and go out of service, displaced
people try to repair them, but they remain entirely unsuitable for winter;
therefore, what is needed now is 280,000 tents.”

Al-Thawabteh affirms that Israel refuses to allow the entry of
prefabricated mobile homes, despite this being a violation of the
humanitarian protocol annexed to the ceasefire agreement.

He adds that these prefabricated units would solve a large part of the
housing and shelter problem for tens of thousands of families suffering
displacement, which Israel insists on rejecting. Such mobile homes would
also provide displaced people with a “dignified” living environment, as an
alternative to tents unfit for human habitation.

Despite repeated collapse incidents and the victims left beneath the
rubble, thousands of families in Gaza continue to live the same harsh
equation: a cracked roof is better than sleeping under a tent that blocks
no wind and offers no protection from wetness at all. Families ask for
nothing more than a basic right, a safe roof, in a merciless reality where
resilience turns into a gamble, and life into a constant wait for something
worse.
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