It was a week after Christmas, early January in 1993. The war in Sarajevo was at its most cruel. There was very little food, water, electricity or heating. The temperatures plummeted to -20°C on some days. There was constant shelling and sniping onto the once-beautiful city and the terrified inhabitants.
One day I drove to an old people’s home on a frontline near the airport, where I’d been told that two or three elderly people died every day in their beds from hypothermia. There was no heating – the last person who tried to chop wood to light a stove was shot through the head by a sniper.
When I entered the home, I could smell the misery. I started taking notes, keeping a record of the number of people who had died there of the cold so that I could report it to the UN (who had done nothing to help). There I met a woman who clutched my hand and said: “Winter, winter...”
I think of this as another winter descends on Gaza. It is not the Balkans. Gaza has a Mediterranean climate. But even so, it grows cold, rainy and damp in the winter. For people whose lives have been so reduced, the constant misery of being hungry, wet and cold will make survival even more difficult.
Rain comes to Gaza in November and December. Many people sleeping in tents and outdoors will be at high risk of disease. There is fear of heavy flooding, which means contaminated water, and more water-borne diseases: cholera, dysentery, typhoid, polio, Hepatitis A. The UN describes the upcoming Gaza winter landscape in the bleakest terms: “diminishing conditions for survival.”
It's heartbreaking how Gazans – already so resourceful from having lived under a punitive blockade since June 2007 – will have even less than they have now. In North Gaza, hardest hit since the Israel-Hamas war began, bakeries and kitchens have been shut. Water and nutrition support is suspended and sanitation restricted.
Under international law, to be adequately housed means having secure tenure – not having to worry about being evicted or having your home disappear. Article 11 (1) of the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights guarantees the right to housing as part of the right to an adequate standard of living. “Housing is a right, not a commodity.”
Yet, the UN says 60 per cent of residential buildings and 80 per cent of commercial buildings in Gaza have been demolished. Everyone I know in Gaza, whom I have contacted, has lost everything. Most of them have been displaced multiple times: 90 per cent – about 1.9 million of the people are displaced within the enclave. Since the beginning of October alone, an estimated 131,000 have been forced out of their dwellings – which gives a sense of collective misery.
Reports say people have only jackets for warmth. Used clothes for sale in markets are often too expensive: the blockade has destroyed Gaza’s economy. People don’t have the money to buy simple winter supplies such as socks or warm shoes.
And even blankets are being weaponised.
Dr Sara Roy, a Harvard political economist who has worked, lived in and researched Gaza for four decades, writes a newsletter for academics, journalists and humanitarians, which consolidates reports and information. Last month, she sent a startling message about blankets. Along with food, water and medical supplies, North Gaza also faces a severe shortage of blankets.
Blankets are used for warmth, but also, because of the shortage of body bags, as burial shrouds for the thousands and thousands of dead. Hani Almadhoun, one of the organisers of the Gaza Soup Kitchen, wrote on his Facebook page: “This final act of generosity, using something so precious to honour the dead, reflects a community striving to preserve dignity when everything else is stripped away. Despite the enemy’s disregard, or perhaps because of it, families have chosen to sacrifice even their warmth to ensure the humanity of their loved ones in death.”
Blankets are also used as gurneys to transport injured people once they are pulled from the rubble. But Mr Almadhoun notes: “Once stained with blood, they are difficult to clean and can no longer be reused.”
He reported that in Beit Lahia, a city north of Jabalia in Gaza, the Israeli army broke into Kamal Adwan Hospital in late October. The hospital had an extreme shortage of supplies, including body bags, medicine and blankets.
World Health Organisation chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus noted that Kamal Adwan Hospital was already struggling to attend to the wounded and the dying. It “has been overflowing with close to 200 patients – a constant stream of horrific trauma cases”. Sheltering in the hospital were about 300 families who had been displaced, some several times.
According to Mr Almadhoun and other witnesses, when the Israeli soldiers entered, allegedly searching for Hamas operatives, “They set the ground floor ablaze, destroying essential medications and medical supplies … But it didn’t stop there. Soldiers ordered the 300 families taking refuge in the hospital to surrender all of their blankets. The very items that provided them warmth, a semblance of comfort in these harsh times, were piled together and set on fire to fuel the destruction. Then, after the blankets were reduced to ashes, these families were forced out into the cold”.
Blankets are like “treasures”, he says, a “brutal reminder of the relentless suffering”.
I could not forget this story, the cruelty of taking the last thing people struggled to keep as a form of dignity – a blanket. But the story also reminded me of something that Gazans have that the Israeli army can never take away from them: resilience.
In 2021 and 2022, I was in Gaza researching “Generation Z” the youth of Gaza who would be the future generation. What I found, among the deprivation (and this was before October 7 last year) was a generation determined to lift themselves up from oppression via education, hard work and innovation.
I saw a collective of feminist green farmers; brilliant computer coders; solar panel specialists; poets, writers, artists, rock stars and actors. I left feeling hope for the future of peace in the region, if young people like them were allowed to continue their inspiring work.
I’ve lost touch with most of the people I interviewed, because they have been displaced or disappeared. What I remember the most was these young people’s extraordinary creativity and resilience, despite conditions that were appalling. Education is the cornerstone for progress, and the Palestinian concept of sumud – steadfastness – is paramount.
Gazans have a deep commitment to learning and one of the strongest sense of family that I have ever witnessed. Together, these attributes are formidable. Dr Brian K Barber, a sociologist focused on youth, is about to publish a book chronicling three Gazans who he followed for three decades. He told me that the strength of Palestinians lay in their solidified family units.
Bearing this extraordinary ability to rise above the worse circumstances, I watched a news report about a university professor, Nidda Aitta. She lost her home and her job in the north and was displaced to the south. Realising what people needed most was warm clothes, Ms Aitta founded the “Needle and Thread” workshop, to create and sell recycled clothing. She uses whatever materials she finds and uses blankets for hoodies for children and seashells for buttons.
“No clothes have entered Gaza since the beginning of the war,” she said in an interview. “My team and I tried to break the cycle of people being reliant on coupons and deliveries [of aid].” The team sewed at first entirely by hand and now use an air-powered bicycle to power their sewing machine.
When I worry that Gaza will never recover, I think of people like Nidda Aitta. And I think of what the late Ronald Schlicher, a diplomat and former US consul general to Jerusalem, once said: “You Israelis can do all sorts of things to the Palestinians, but you won't buy them and you won't break them.”
