'Life in Gaza simply miserable': Amid flooding, lack of aid, conditions 'worsen' for Palestinians

For more than on the humanitarian situation in Gaza, we're going to cross now to Shaina Lowe, the Norwegian Refugee Council's communications advisor in Palestine. She joins us on the program from Amman, Jordan. Shaina, thank you very much for taking the time to speak to France 24 today. So, I mean, for a very long time now, it's been very difficult to imagine the humanitarian situation in Gaza being worse than it already was. It sounds like this past weekend, conditions did It did indeed deteriorate even further, as hard as that is to imagine. I mean, can you just give us a feel for what life looks like in some of the worst affected areas of Gaza now? Life in Gaza is simply miserable. As was reported in the piece before me, a million people or so are expected to be living in in areas at medium to high risk of flooding. So what we saw over this weekend is that people's tents blew away, collapsed. We saw people killed when a sand dune collapsed on them. We saw people's belongings be washed away, drenched and destroyed by floodwaters and The thing that is most frustrating is that aid agencies are on the ground ready to respond, but we don't have the materials that we need, the supplies that we need inside. There are apparently 100,000 tents pre-positioned outside of Gaza waiting to enter, but they haven't entered yet. And it's... Boggling to me. It's insane to me that for four years we've been calling for the same thing. Open all the crossings, lift the restrictions, let aid in. And yet here we are facing our fourth winter since October of 2023, having the same demands. We're 13 months into a ceasefire, a so-called ceasefire. At this point, we would have expected people to be moving into more durable shelters outside of tents and tarpaulin makeshift shelters, and then to... Shelters that provide more protection, that don't blow away in winter winds, and that don't flood during rainstorms. I mean, what's preventing those materials from getting in? I ask because obviously late last year, Israel had suspended humanitarian operations. And then earlier this year, the Israeli high court granted an interim injunction suspending that order, which, as a reminder to our viewers, affected 37 international organizations, including your own. So my question is double edged. I mean, on the one hand, Why isn't more aid getting in since that order was suspended? And what do you think is the strategy on the part of the Israeli government here? Well, actually back in June, that order came to an end. And so the Israeli High Court upheld the Israeli Interministerial Committee's decision to not grant us new registration. So NRC and dozens of other humanitarian agencies are blocked and have been blocked since March of 2025. From bringing aid directly into Gaza. There are agencies, though, that are able to bring in aid, but what's blocking the entry is Israeli restrictions. Up until a few weeks ago, Israel was only allowing 15 trucks of what they refer to as dual-use materials. That's not just shelter materials like timber and tents and tarpaulins, but it's also materials needed to repair water systems, materials needed for hospitals. And so a very, very small trickle of aid has been entering. The number of trucks have been steadily decreasing since last year in the immediate aftermath of the ceasefire. And this is Israel's doing. There's currently only one crossing into Gaza that aid can enter through the Kerem Shalom crossing. The second crossing, Zikim, in the north, closed back in May. The Israeli authorities shut it down in May and have not restored access. And so there's a bottleneck. We're facing continued restrictions. Sometimes aid is approved to enter and then rejected and sent back at the crossings. Sometimes aid is being stuck up. by bureaucracy, like customs clearances and additional permissions. You'd think at this point, the international community would be demanding that Israel facilitate aid. This is their responsibility under international law, their obligation under international law. And instead, we've seen very little pressure. And we've seen that people in Gaza, the innocent civilians who have suffered through more than three years of misery are continuing to pay the price. Shayna, are you able to speak? To what the negotiation process with Israeli officials and authorities looks like when humanitarian organizations are trying to convince them to lift these restrictions, to justify the kind of really urgent materials that they need simply in order to keep people alive. I mean, what does that back and forth look like? How receptive are, you know, the Israeli stakeholders involved to hearing these arguments? Well, I'm not privy to these conversations. And my understanding is that oftentimes when aid is rejected, it's not done in an official way. It's sent in a WhatsApp message or a voice message or said verbally. And so there isn't a written record of what's going on or why an aid item might be allowed in one day and rejected the next or approved and then rejected and returned at the crossings. The Israeli authorities, of course, publicly claim that that has to do with With the negotiations. process with Hamas. But that really can't justify and should not be just it's not justifiable on why innocent civilians should not have access to the aid that they are that they have a right to receive. You mentioned the ceasefire earlier, Shaina. As a reminder, again, to our viewers, it has technically been in place for over a year now, since October of last year. What, if anything, did that ceasefire change for residents of Gaza? And most importantly, for the humanitarian situation in particular? Well, we saw that while the level of bombardment has decreased, we've still seen over 1,500 people killed in Gaza by Israeli forces. We've also seen over the last 15 months that Israeli, or 13 months rather, that Israeli forces have continued to... encroach upon the area that they had left and were supposed to leave for Palestinian use. So what started as a little bit less than 50% of Gaza that Palestinians could live in has now decreased to about 30% of Gaza. And what that means is that Palestinians are living in tighter and tighter spaces. People are still continuing to be displaced. And the areas that they're being Being forced into are the areas near the coast, which are more. More susceptible to flooding, where we see that sand can be washed away and invade people's and go into people's tents. And so, And so we've seen that the conditions where we thought they would be improving are actually getting worse for Palestinians. As a double-edged final question again for you, Shaina, looking into the winter months, what do you think are the most pressing, the most urgent needs for civilians in Gaza? And the second part of that question, Israel is, of course, still in the midst of trying to form a government. If opposition leader Gadi Eisenkot does end up being to form that government, to oust Benjamin Netanyahu as prime minister, do you expect anything to change in Gaza under his rule? The winter months are going to be incredibly difficult and we will need to continue to see emergency aid enter tents, tarpaulins, we need timber to enter, but on top of those things we also need things like blankets, mattresses. Winter clothes. Right now, the shelter response, which includes essential household items and clothing, only less than 1% of clothing has been funded for Palestinians in Gaza. So the needs are really great right now. The bare minimum emergency response for Gaza is estimated to be around $286 million. Only 35% of that has been funded. So we desperately need governments to step up donate to the shelter response. In terms of what lies ahead, we don't have high hopes that things will improve for Palestinians in Gaza anytime soon, but I can't speak directly to what the future government of Israel will do. All that I can say is that we will continue to advocate for Palestinian civilians in Gaza to have access to safe shelters. Safe homes, the ability to return to their places of origin, the ability to have access to food, to school, to health care, all of the things that every human has a right to receive and that the people in Gaza have been deprived of for so long. Shaina Lowe, the Norwegian Refugee Council's communications advisor in Palestine, thank you so very much for joining us today.