Deir el-Balah, Gaza Strip \u2013<\/strong> The first heavy rain of the winter season arrived not as a blessing, but as a new catastrophe for Samar al-Salmi and her family.<\/p>\n Early in the morning, torrents of water crashed through their worn-out tent in a displacement camp, jolting them awake as the ground beneath them turned into a muddy pool.<\/p>\n list of 3 items<\/span>end of list<\/span><\/section>\n All around them, displaced people scrambled to repair what the rain had destroyed, filling waterlogged holes with sand and lifting drenched mattresses into the weak winter sun.<\/p>\n For 35-year-old Samar, the timing could not have been worse.<\/p>\n She is due to give birth imminently, and everything she has prepared for her newborn daughter was drenched.<\/p>\n \u201cAll the baby\u2019s clothes were soaked in mud, as you can see,\u201d she says, lifting tiny garments covered in brown stains. \u201cEverything I prepared was submerged, even the diapers and the box of milk formula.\u201d<\/p>\n Samar, her husband, and their three children live in a tent in Deir el-Balah, near tents where her mother and siblings live. They are all displaced from their home in Tal al-Hawa in southwest Gaza City, as a result of Israel\u2019s genocidal war on Gaza.<\/p>\n \u201cThere are no words to describe how I feel right now,\u201d Samar says, her voice almost breaking. \u201cI feel like my mind is going to freeze. How am I supposed to welcome my baby girl like this?\u201d<\/p>\n While Samar tries to salvage clothes and blankets, her husband and brothers shovel sand into the pools of water that have swallowed their living space. Mattresses, clothing, and basic belongings lie scattered around them, soaked and unusable.<\/p>\n \u201cI put the baby\u2019s hospital bag in my mother\u2019s tent, thinking it would be safe,\u201d she says. \u201cBut the rain rushed in there first and flooded everything, including the bag.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cI don\u2019t know where to start,\u201d she adds. \u201cShould I care for my children, whose clothes are full of mud and sand so I need to heat water and bathe them?<\/p>\n \u201cOr do I try to dry the mattresses that will be so difficult in this cold? Or should I prepare myself so I\u2019m ready to give birth at any moment?\u201d she asks.<\/p>\n Since the war began two years ago, aid organisations have warned that Gaza\u2019s displaced families would face catastrophe each time winter arrived, as they live in thin, tattered tents as a result of a strict Israeli ban on construction materials and caravans entering the Gaza Strip.<\/p>\n \u201cA tent is not a solution,\u201d Samar says. \u201cIn the summer, it\u2019s unbearably hot, and in the winter, we flood. This is not a life. And winter hasn\u2019t even started yet. What will we do when the real cold arrives?\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cAt the very least, why weren\u2019t caravans allowed in? Any roof to shelter us until this ends.\u201d<\/p>\n Samar\u2019s husband, Abdulrahman al-Salmi, sits quietly, busy repairing the tents with her brothers. At first, he is so discouraged that he says he doesn\u2019t even feel like talking to Al Jazeera. But gradually, he begins to open up.<\/p>\n \u201cAs a father, I\u2019m helpless,\u201d the 39-year-old says. \u201cI try to hold our life together from one side, and it collapses on the other. That\u2019s our life during and after the war. We\u2019ve been unable to find any solution.\u201d<\/p>\n He recounts the moment Samar called him earlier that morning while he was on his way to his first day of work at a small barbershop.<\/p>\n \u201cShe was crying and screaming, and everyone around her was screaming,\u201d he recalls. \u201cShe told me, \u2018Come quickly, the rain has invaded our tent from every direction.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n He dropped everything and ran back under the rain.<\/p>\n \u201cThe place was completely flooded, like a swimming pool,\u201d he says, tears filling his eyes. \u201cMy wife and mother-in-law were screaming, my children were outside shivering from the cold, the tents were flooded, the street was flooded\u2026 people were scooping water out of their tents with buckets. Everything was extremely difficult.\u201d<\/p>\n For Abdulrahman, the rain feels like the final blow.<\/p>\n \u201cWe\u2019ve been struggling in everything since the war began, and now the rain has come to finish us off completely.\u201d<\/p>\n The father spoke of his immense difficulty in providing essentials for the newborn amid severe shortages and skyrocketing prices.<\/p>\n \u201cI bought the diapers for 85 shekels ($26), the same type we used to get for 13 ($4),\u201d he says. \u201cThe milk formula is 70 ($21). Even the pacifier is expensive. And now everything we prepared for tomorrow\u2019s delivery is ruined. I don\u2019t know what to do.\u201d<\/p>\n The couple cannot help but remember the life they once had; their warm, clean second-floor apartment in Tal al-Hawa, where they once lived a dignified and peaceful life, as they put it.<\/p>\n \u201cNow the apartment, the building, and the entire neighbourhood are destroyed,\u201d Samar says. \u201cAll our family homes are gone. We have no option but to live in tents.\u201d<\/p>\n What terrifies the couple most is welcoming their baby girl into these conditions. Samar is scheduled for a C-section and will return afterwards to the tent.<\/p>\n \u201cI never imagined this,\u201d she says softly. \u201cI never imagined I would welcome the daughter we dreamed of under these conditions.\u201d<\/p>\n She admits, through guilt, that she sometimes regrets getting pregnant during the war.<\/p>\n \u201cIn my previous deliveries, I returned from the hospital to my apartment, to my comfortable bed, and I took care of myself and my baby peacefully,\u201d she adds with grief.<\/p>\n \u201cAny mother in the world would understand my feelings now, the sensitivity of the last days of pregnancy, the delivery itself, and the early days afterward.\u201d<\/p>\n Like most families in Gaza, Samar\u2019s has been displaced repeatedly, moving between Khan Younis, Rafah, Nuseirat, and Deir el-Balah.<\/p>\n \u201cI fled to my family\u2019s home, then my uncle\u2019s home, then my husband\u2019s family. Every house we fled to is now destroyed, and everyone is homeless,\u201d Samar says.<\/p>\n Their children, Mohammad, seven, Kinan, five, and Yaman, three, have suffered the most.<\/p>\n \u201cLook at them,\u201d she says. \u201cThey\u2019re shivering from the cold. They don\u2019t have enough clothes. And the laundry I just washed is covered in mud again.\u201d<\/p>\n A few days ago, the children needed to be taken to the hospital after being bitten by insects inside the camp. Cold and illness stalk them every night.<\/p>\n \u201cThe older boy couldn\u2019t sleep from stomach pain,\u201d Abdulrahman says. \u201cI covered him and covered him, but it didn\u2019t help. There are no blankets \u2026 nothing.\u201d<\/p>\n For Samar, even the ceasefire has brought no comfort. She rejects the narrative that the war has calmed down. To her, the war never stopped.<\/p>\n \u201cThey say the war is over. Where is it over?\u201d Samar asks. \u201cEvery day there is bombing, every day there are martyrs, and every day we drown and suffer. This is the beginning of a new war, not the end.\u201d<\/p>\n Above all, the couple wants only one thing: dignity.<\/p>\n \u201cEven caravans are not a real solution; they\u2019re temporary,\u201d Samar says. \u201cWe are human beings. We had homes. Our demand is to rebuild our homes.\u201d<\/p>\n Her final plea is directed at humanitarian organisations.<\/p>\n \u201cWe need clothes, mattresses, blankets. Everything is ruined. We need someone to stand with us. We need a place to shelter us. It\u2019s impossible to keep living on a sheet of plastic.\u201d<\/p>\n As for Abdulrahman, he sums up their reality with a single sentence as he spreads another layer of sand:<\/p>\n \u201cHonestly\u2026 we\u2019ve become bodies without souls.\u201d<\/p>\n Deir el-Balah, Gaza Strip \u2013 The first heavy rain of the winter season arrived not as a blessing, but as a new catastrophe for Samar al-Salmi and her family. Early in the morning, torrents of water crashed through their worn-out tent in a displacement camp, jolting them awake as the ground beneath them turned into […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":3974,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3973","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-middle-east-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3973","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3973"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3973\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/3974"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3973"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3973"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3973"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}Recommended Stories <\/h2>\n
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