Feature: Rain, severe cold redoubles Gazans' suffering

Samir Manasrah, his three children and several neighbors wore heavy garments and sat down around a stove under a broken ceiling of a destroyed house in the Sheja'eya district in eastern Gaza city to hide from the heavy rains and the cold winds.

"Life in Gaza is hard, while this bad weather made it harder. Unfortunately no one cares, but we do care for our children and our future, no one wants to help us; there is no electricity, no gas and no water," said Manasrah, as white vapor of exhalation came out from his mouth.

A powerful storm, which struck the coast of the Middle East, including the Gaza Strip, redoubled the people's suffering. They have been waiting for the pledged donors' financial aid to rebuild unchangeable scene of destruction in both housing and infrastructure since August.

Although the UN paid temporary rent fees to thousands of families to rent apartments for six months, the owners of the destroyed houses said the problem is not the rent, because they not only lost the construction, but also lost the furniture and their clothes.

"All the temporary solutions can never help, instead of killing the pain, they must treat the infection," said Manasrah, adding that "the leaders of the Palestinian people, the Arab and Islamic countries and the international community should all hurry up and help us before we go through serious disasters."

Israel waged a 50-day large-scale air and ground military operation against Hamas-led militant groups in the Gaza Strip, which ended on Aug. 26, but left 2,200 people killed, 11,000 wounded and tens of thousands of displaced residents after their homes were completely destroyed or badly damaged.

On Oct. 12, international and Arab donors convened in Cairo for two days and pledged 5.4 billion U.S. dollars to reconstruct the houses and rebuild the largely destroyed infrastructure of the impoverished enclave, mainly sewage, water and electricity.

However, internal disputes between Gaza Strip's Hamas rulers, who seized control of the territory in the summer of 2007, and the Palestinian National Authority (PNA) in the West Bank disagreeing on a UN mechanism of allowing construction materials left the scenes of destruction unchangeable.

The largest damage of houses happened in the Gaza Strip areas which are closed to the borders between the Gaza Strip and Israel, when Israeli ground forces of tanks and armored vehicles stormed Beit Hanoun, Khuza'a and Sheja'eya.

During the successive three-day heavy storm, the heavy rain and the cold and strong winds wounded 18 people. The civil defense and the rescue teams evacuated hundreds of residents in towns of Sheja'eya and Rafah as well as in the village of Khuza'a and took them to UN schools.

Ashraf al-Qedra, health ministry spokesman, told reporters that a 4-month old baby girl from the village of Khuza'a in southeast Gaza died on Friday due to severe cold. The family live in a metal-made caravan given to them temporarily instead of their destroyed house.

Shayma'a Abu Aassi, the mother of the baby girl, said her daughter died after she inhaled the smoke of fire the family made to warm themselves, adding that the baby girl was suffocated and when the father took the baby to the hospital, doctors failed to rescue her life and she was declared dead.

Anis Abu Aassi, the baby girl's uncle, said with anger that "if we have a normal life, like other people live in any country in the world and if there is electricity and a well-protected constructed house, all our tragedies will immediately end, but I believe that in Gaza tragedies are endless."

The Gaza Strip, with 1.8 million people, most of them are refugees, suffers from high rates of poverty, unemployment and a lack of electricity and fuel. People here believe that their coastal enclave, which is under a tight Israeli blockade, is not a "big prison" anymore, but it turned into a "big graveyard."

"If the situation continues like this, seriously the Gaza Strip will become a graveyard for tens of thousands of women, children and elderly. During the war, the people were killed by Israeli missiles and random tank shells and now the people die of cold," said Anis Abu Aassi. Endit