TPC Staff
The Palestine Chronicle / August 20, 2026
Nearly two million displaced Palestinians are enduring scorching summer heat in makeshift Gaza shelters, with little water, electricity or protection.
Gaza – For hundreds of thousands of displaced Palestinian families in Gaza, surviving another summer now means finding ways to endure scorching temperatures inside tents and makeshift shelters with no electricity, cooling equipment and often barely enough water to drink.
Around 1.9 million of Gaza’s 2.4 million residents are living in tents and temporary shelters, after their homes were destroyed during Israel’s genocidal war on the Gaza Strip.
In southern Gaza, families are improvising whatever protection they can.
Some place additional coverings above their tents to keep direct sunlight from reaching the fabric. Others open sections of their shelters in an attempt to create airflow.
Parents sometimes pour water over their children simply to cool their bodies.
But with water itself increasingly difficult to obtain, even that basic means of relief has become something families must ration.
‘We cannot sit inside the tent’
Jamalat Siam, who was displaced from Rafah, now lives in a tent in the Al-Mawasi area west of Khan Yunis.
She described conditions inside the shelter during the summer as almost unbearable.
“In the summer, we cannot sit inside the tent. We put a barrier over it and stay in the shade,” Siam told Anadolu news agency.
Children are particularly vulnerable to the temperatures, she said, sometimes pouring water over themselves for relief and suffering from exhaustion in the heat.
The conditions have forced families to improvise with almost anything available around them.
For Siam’s family, that includes the remnants of Gaza itself.
Family members collect pieces of rubble from streets and destroyed buildings and pile them around their tent. The debris provides some protection from the sun, but it serves another purpose as well: a makeshift barrier against Israeli gunfire.
Even then, Siam said, there is little feeling of safety.
The area “is not safe,” she said, describing persistent fears that Israeli forces could launch another ground incursion.
Daily struggle
For Kholoud Abu Mohsen, a mother of five from Khan Yunis, keeping her children cool requires using a resource the family already struggles to obtain.
Her family travels long distances to secure water for everyday needs, particularly drinking water.
When possible, Abu Mohsen fills a plastic basin and places her children inside it to give them some relief from the heat.
But every use of water must be weighed against the difficulty of replacing it.
Abu Mohsen’s family lives in a makeshift shelter erected over the ruins of their destroyed home. She has created openings in its walls to increase ventilation, but says they have done little to make the temperatures bearable.
There are no electric fans. Instead, pieces of cardboard and plastic are used to move air inside the shelter, amid an electricity crisis that has persisted throughout nearly three years of war.
Malnutrition amid extreme conditions
Heat and water shortages are only part of the family’s struggle.
Abu Mohsen said they have difficulty obtaining food and survive largely on rice and lentils.
One of her daughters has a congenital eye condition requiring medical treatment, while another daughter, approximately six months old, suffers from severe malnutrition.
The family’s financial circumstances have forced Abu Mohsen to take whatever daily work she can find.
She told Anadolu that she sometimes earns only five or 10 shekels — approximately $1.70 to $3.30 — per day, money she uses to purchase diapers and other essential supplies for her children.
The situation reflects the multiple crises facing displaced families simultaneously: inadequate shelter, extreme heat, scarce water, food insecurity, lack of electricity and a health system struggling to provide treatment.
1.9 million living in displacement
The conditions come against the backdrop of destruction on an extraordinary scale.
More than 73,000 Palestinians have been killed and over 174,000 wounded since October 2023, while approximately 90 percent of Gaza’s civilian infrastructure has been damaged or destroyed.
The UN has estimated the cost of reconstruction at around $70 billion.
Although a ceasefire took effect on October 10, 2025, Israel continues its blockade and restrictions on the movement of people, goods and humanitarian assistance into the Gaza Strip.
Israeli military operations have also continued during the ceasefire period, killing more than 1,270 Palestinians and wounding thousands more.
For families living among the ruins, however, summer has introduced another immediate struggle.
With no reliable electricity, inadequate shelter and water that must sometimes be carried over long distances, even finding relief from the heat has become part of the daily effort to survive.
(Anadolu, TPC)
