Actions needed now
The rains of 6–7 Nov 2026 flooded tents across Gaza. A month earlier the United Nations Office for the Co-ordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) warned that 950,000 displaced people faced medium or high flood risk and that stocks could partly help only 18 per cent of families needing winter shelter; the UK Government repeated that figure to Parliament on 2 Nov.
Immediately, on the ground
- Open every crossing to winter cargo, including repair timber and sheeting, bedding, and to the International Organisation for Migration (IOM) shelter kits and Egyptian and Qatari mobile homes that Israel has refused refused entry.
- Admit generators, pumps, spare parts and engine oil to restart flood pumps, sewage trucks and water tankers.
- Close the US$186.5m winter shelter funding gap and bring forward late-winter supplies.
- Provide safe land, transport and continuing services for voluntary relocation from flood zones, prioritising newborns, children, pregnant women, older and disabled people.
Reverse the policies that created this
- Decouple civilian protection from the disarmament and withdrawal dispute, as UNSC resolution 2803 stated.
- Stop dismantling the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestinian Refugees (UNRWA): no further cuts, no transfer of its functions to the Board of Peace before funded equivalent capacity exists, and repeal of the Knesset laws against it.
- Turn Board of Peace pledges into cash and spend its costed US$480m for shelter and winterisation.
- End the blanket ‘dual use’ bar on timber, cement and metal sheeting.
- Immediate actions by the United Kingdom Government
- Apply the new International Humanitarian Law (IHL) sanctions regime, against published criteria, to those who obstructed aid and attacked UNRWA: a clear first case.
- Make an oral statement this week and publish a named Gaza winter allocation within the £88m, with partners, dates and outcomes.
- Make an emergency contribution to UNRWA’s US$80m deficit and publicly oppose premature transfer of its functions.
- Press Israel to publish and urgently resolve consignment-level refusals; publish the UK’s own list of blocked UK-funded items.
- Require the Board and donors to publish a weekly ledger of funds disbursed, goods admitted and distributed, shelters installed and pumping restored.
What happened on 6–7 Nov 2026
Heavy rain and high winds from Friday evening flooded tents from Jabalia and Gaza port in the north to Khan Younis in the south. Gaza’s government media office estimates 70,000 tents flooded in12 hours; Civil Defence logged 2,166 distress calls and could answer 218, citing fuel shortages and damaged equipment. Both are local figures, not verified by the UN (Reuters, Jerusalem Post).
Two bomb-damaged walls collapsed, injuring four people, and a building in Nuseirat partly collapsed. No deaths had been reported by Saturday; last winter UNICEF recorded at least 11 child deaths from hypothermia in Gaza (WAFA, OCHA 5 Nov, United Nations Children Fund). The UN points to the same causes. OCHA said on 7 Nov that months of funding shortfalls and restrictions had severely constrained preparations, and called for immediate entry of winter supplies, heavy machinery, engine oil and spare parts (OCHA 7 Nov).
Why rain became a catastrophe
Nearly 2m people need shelter assistance; 54 per cent of tents and makeshift shelters were in poor condition before the storm (IOM), and 71 per cent of households surveyed in June had flooded since last winter (NRC).
Israel disputes this: The Israeli army’s Co-ordinator of Government Activities in the Territories (COGAT) says 91,000 new tents, with tarpaulins and 9,000 truckloads of clothing and blankets, have been delivered for winter (Jerusalem Post). The figures are undated and unitemised, and do not alter OCHA’s count of remaining need.
Three policy decisions caused this:
- Materials blocked. Timber, cement and metal sheeting are treated as ‘dual use’, keeping families in short-life tents; timber for shelter kits is still refused. At the permitted rate, NRC calculated, the Jordan-route shelter backlog would take over seven months to enter; 8,600 IOM shelter kits and 5,000 Egyptian and Qatari mobile homes were turned away (NRC, OCHA 5 Nov).
- Drainage disabled. On 1 Nov Gaza’s water utility warned that restrictions on spare parts and engine oil threatened flood pumps, sewage trucks and water tankers. The Abu Rashid stormwater basin is out of action, and UNICEF warned that Sheikh Radwan would overflow without equipment Israel had not admitted (CMWU, OCHA 29 Oct).
- Response defunded. Seventy per cent of the winter shelter appeal is unfunded; only about 2,000 more tents, and no mattresses, wait outside Gaza, and the main pipeline arrives in late winter (OCHA 5 Nov).
The Board of Peace: relief must come before politics
Resolution 2803 gave the Board explicit humanitarian duties and promised immediate full aid, including sewage rehabilitation (S/RES/2803). Surely this is why states voted for it. In September the Board costed 66 projects at US$2.45 bn, among them US$400m for insulated mobile shelters, US$80 m for winterisation and US$20 m for eight pumping stations (programme).
None of it reached a family before the rain.
By September only US$280m of US$17 bn pledged had been transferred, no start date was set, and the Palestinian administrative committee could not enter Gaza (Times of Israel); UNSCO found recovery far below the scale required (UNSCO).
UN agencies have delivered under the ceasefire, and the Board has delivered some cargo. But the plan the Security Council endorsed put immediate relief first; disarmament, withdrawal and new institutions came after.
That sequence has been reversed, and Israel now says so: on 8 Nov security officials said reconstruction equipment and mobile homes will not enter while Hamas refuses to disarm (Jerusalem Post). Fear of rearmament is a case for inspection and monitoring, not for leaving families in flooded tents. Rationing aid owed on need alone breaches the principles of humanity and impartiality, and 2803 itself. Dry shelter, working pumps and clean water are not rewards for political progress; they are the first test of the transition.
The Board will report to the Security Council on 15 Nov and its mandate is up for renewal in 2027. Israel’s expulsion of British officials from the International Gaza Support Centre in September, in retaliation for settlement sanctions (Al Jazeera), removed Britain from the coordination room, not from the Council. The UK voted for 2803 and declined to join the Board (Commons Library); as a permanent member it should:
- Put the Board under real Council oversight, with external benchmarks (households sheltered, pumping restored, goods delivered, pledges disbursed) and independent verification, and answer the 15 Nov report publicly against them.
- Make UK support for renewal in 2027 conditional on verified relief and recovery, including full access for UN bodies, UNRWA among them, and established international NGOs, including those Israel has deregistered.
Dismantling UNRWA removes Gaza’s flood response
UNRWA is the network that clears drains, removes waste, inspects shelters and finds the households most at risk. In October it unblocked 1,257 manholes, ran 678 drainage clearances, sheltered 65,000 people in 114 centres and prioritised 270 households in dangerous buildings for relocation, with pumps idle for want of engine oil (UNRWA 5 Nov, SitRep 237).
That network is being dismantled by law and by starvation of funds. The Knesset barred official contact in 2024 and in December 2025 cut water and electricity to UNRWA premises; the UN Secretary-General called this inconsistent with international law and said UNRWA supports implementation of 2803 (Knesset, UNSG).
Israel has blocked UNRWA’s international staff and supplies since March 2025, against the ICJ’s October 2025 advisory opinion. UNRWA has cut service hours by 20 per cent and carries a US$80 m deficit. On 5 Nov UNRWA rejected a reported plan to hand its functions to the Board, saying no other organisation can deliver at equivalent scale in Gaza (AFP, Europa Press). No transfer has been shown to reproduce UNRWA’s 10,500 Gaza staff, facilities, legal access and community trust; cutting first weakens prevention and rescue at once. The UK’s £23 m pledge in June needs political as well as financial follow through (Donor Tracker).
What the UK Government has said and done
In a written answer on 2 Nov, Lord Wood of Anfield acknowledged the 18 per cent figure of those who have been helped, said the UK was pressing Israel to admit dual-use shelter, fuel, water and health items, and cited £88m in humanitarian and early recovery support this year (HL4287). That sum covers Gaza and the West Bank; it is not a winter allocation, and no delivery figures have been published (Arab News). Last winter the UK funded tents for 12,000 people and matched £3 m of DEC donations. On 27 Oct a minister told the Commons that the Government ‘will use’ the new sanctions powers (Hansard) the question is when.
The new IHL sanctions regime: a clear first case
The Global Human Rights and International Humanitarian Law Sanctions Regulations 2026 (SI 2026/1071), in force since 15 Oct, allow designation of anyone, anywhere, reasonably suspected of involvement in serious violations of international humanitarian law or obstruction of humanitarian assistance.
The UK Government deserves credit for this serious reform; Lord Wood told the Lords on 4 Nov that it lets the UK respond ‘where aid has been deliberately prevented from reaching civilian populations’ (Hansard). The flooding is its first test.
In November 2024 ICC judges issued arrest warrants for Israel’s Prime Minister and former Defence Minister, finding reasonable grounds to believe they bore criminal responsibility for the war crime of starvation as a method of warfare: a higher bar than the new Regulations set.
Since the ceasefire: the arbitrary denial of shelter materials, fuel and pumps; the exclusion of UNRWA’s international staff; the deregistration of 37 international NGOs; legislation to shut UNRWA down. Each obstructs humanitarian assistance. Those responsible for leaving Gaza’s displaced flooded this week, as children died of cold last winter, are exactly whom this regime was written for.
Sanctions Designations should follow the evidence, against published criteria: Ministers and officials who designed or enforce the restrictions; convoy-blocking groups such as the EU-listed Tzav 9, eligible for the urgent procedure; and members of Hamas or any armed group found diverting aid. Even-handedness answers both the regret motion and Lord Gold’s charge in the debate that the regime ‘applies only to Israel’. On 28 Oct, 75 MPs and peers, in a letter co-ordinated by Caabu and the Britain Palestine Project, asked for designations ‘before winter sets in’ (Caabu). Winter arrived nine days later.
Yours sincerely,
Brian Brivati
Executive Director, Britain Palestine Project