Preparing Gaza’s Families for Winter: Our Emergency Plan

Winter in Gaza is not dramatic on a map. Temperatures rarely touch freezing; the rain comes in bands rather than storms. But winter is not experienced on a map. It is experienced in a tent with a wet floor, in a child’s single set of clothes that will not dry, in the arithmetic of a family deciding between fuel for cooking and fuel for warmth.

For displaced families living in structures never meant to be homes, winter is an emergency that arrives on schedule. That is its one mercy: it can be prepared for. This is how Fight for Palestine prepared — and what your support delivered before the first cold front arrived.

Planning backwards from the first cold night

Our winterization campaign began in October with a simple discipline: work backwards from the date the cold reliably arrives, and let nothing slip past it. Procurement was sequenced first — blankets and tarpaulins have long lead times — followed by warehouse consolidation, family list verification, and finally distribution scheduling.

By mid-December, ahead of the first serious rains, our teams had completed the core distribution round. Preparedness is the least photogenic form of aid: when it works, the story is that nothing happened. Families were cold-stressed less, sick less, desperate less. We consider that invisible result the entire point.

The planning drew heavily on what families told us after last winter. We surveyed several hundred households in the spring — while memories of the cold were still specific — and their answers reshaped the whole campaign: distribute earlier, size children’s clothing larger, add ground mats, and put fuel support in the kit rather than treating it as a separate program. Nearly every improvement in this year’s response began as a sentence in one of those surveys.

What a winter kit contains

Every item in our winter kit earned its place through feedback from last season. Families told us thermal blankets outperform ordinary ones at half the weight; that tarpaulins fail at the grommets first, so we specify reinforced ones; that children outgrow clothing mid-season, so sizing must run generous.

This season our teams distributed 2,800 winter kits, prioritizing families in tents and makeshift shelters, households with infants or elderly members, and those on exposed or low-lying ground where rain pools first.

Distribution followed the same token-and-list system we use for food parcels, with one winter-specific addition: kits are heavy, so every distribution point ran a carrying team of volunteers with hand carts for elderly recipients and mothers managing children alone. No one should have to choose between collecting warmth and being able to carry it home.

• 4 high-thermal blankets sized for adults and children
• Reinforced tarpaulin and rope for sealing shelter gaps
• Warm clothing bundles for children, sized generously
• Insulated ground mats to break contact with cold, wet earth
• A fuel voucher accepted by local suppliers we vet directly

Shelter weatherproofing teams

Kits alone cannot fix a leaking roof. Alongside distributions, we fielded four two-person weatherproofing teams — local tradesmen equipped with tarpaulins, timber battens, and sealant — who moved through displacement sites repairing the most vulnerable shelters directly.

The teams completed 460 shelter interventions this season. Their working rule is humble and strict: every shelter they leave must shed rain away from where people sleep. It is carpentry at its most consequential — an hour’s work that changes every night of a family’s winter.

Site selection for the teams follows the water, literally: our coordinators walk each displacement site during the first light rain of the season and mark where it pools, which shelters sit in the flow, and which tarpaulins are already failing. That one wet afternoon of surveying sets the repair queue for the month. It is the cheapest assessment tool we have ever used, and among the most accurate.

The night of the first big rain, I lay awake waiting for the dripping to start. It never did. I cried from relief, quietly, so the children would not wake.

Warmth for the smallest

Infants and young children lose heat faster than adults and cannot tell anyone they are cold. Our medical team screened for cold-vulnerable households during clinic days, and those families received priority kits plus infant-specific additions: fleece sleep sacks, wool hats, and extra layers.

We also ran parent sessions on recognizing cold stress in babies — a small educational add-on that costs almost nothing and, our medical lead insists, ranks among the highest-value hours of the whole campaign.

Our mobile clinics adjusted their winter rhythm too, adding respiratory checks to routine visits and stocking additional treatment for the chest infections that damp cold reliably brings. Winterization and healthcare are one program wearing two uniforms: every blanket distributed in December is a clinic visit prevented in January, and our teams plan the two together, site by site.

What remains to be done

Winter is not over, and neither is the campaign. A reserve of 400 kits is warehoused for new displacements and for families whose situations deteriorate mid-season. Our weatherproofing teams continue on-call repairs, and fuel voucher top-ups are scheduled for the coldest weeks ahead.

If you gave to our winter appeal: 2,800 kits, 460 repaired shelters, and thousands of warmer nights carry your fingerprints. If you have not yet — the cold has weeks left in it, and so does our response. There is still time to put a blanket between a child and the winter.

And when the season turns, the campaign will end the way it began: with listening. Our teams will survey families again in the spring, write down what worked and what fell short, and let those answers draw next winter’s plan. Cold arrives on schedule. So, with your help, will we.