It was the depths of winter when Maryam Arafat, her husband and three young children fled their home in Gaza City under Israeli bombardment. The family was forced to shelter in a rickety tent in Deir al-Balah, shivering in the freezing night with no fuel to stay warm and not enough clothing to keep them warm.
Since then, the weather along the Strip’s coast has become hot and humid, and the same tent has become unbearable and suffocating.
“It felt like the tent was on fire,” Ms. Arafat, 23, said. “The heat is unbearable, especially for children.” One-year-old Yahya sat on her lap and screamed in discomfort.
When the weather is cold, nearly 2 million Palestinians in Gaza are forced to flee their homes under Israeli bombing and military evacuation orders, and many find that the temporary tents they live in can barely withstand the low temperature. Without heating fuel, Gazans cut down many trees to burn for heating and cooking.
Now, with the sun blazing overhead and few trees providing shade, temperatures are soaring, reaching a high of 39 degrees Celsius (102 degrees Fahrenheit) on Wednesday.
Scott Anderson, UNRWA’s deputy director of operations in Gaza, said on Sunday that rising temperatures were making fighting the spread of disease as high a priority as delivering food.
The heat is exacerbating the already serious problems of Israel’s war in Gaza. People rely on water to stay cool, which is already in short supply and not easily accessible, and warm weather brings insects that help spread disease.
“Everything in the world has become difficult,” Ms. Arafat said. “no water.”
Ms. Arafat fanned her children with a piece of cardboard and moistened their heads and limbs with what little water they had.
As temperatures rise, so do mosquitoes, ants, and other bugs. At night, Ms. Arafat and her husband stayed up late to look after their three children, fearing they would be bitten. Their tent was in a campground in an open field, and she worried about more dangerous threats, such as snakes.
Fadwa Abu Waqfa, 37, a mother of three who lives in a tent in Rafah, remembers that even in peacetime, when her family lived in a tent with air conditioning, a refrigerator and cold water, they also find it difficult to endure the heat of Gaza.
She said the current situation cannot be described in words.
“We can’t sit outside and we can’t sit in the tent,” she said. “It’s so hard. It’s a heat that I can’t describe.”
She and her family now spend most of their time walking to and from the pump, filling up two gallons of water with each trip.
Her 3-year-old son, Osama, woke up in the middle of the night from the heat and all she could do was give him water. She knew this was just the beginning and that the temperatures would get worse over the next few months.
“We just pray for God’s mercy,” she said.
