Foreign Ministers of eight countries – Britain, Canada, Denmark, Finland, France, Iceland, Japan, Norway, Sweden – have issued a statement about conditions in Gaza.

They said: “As winter draws in civilians in Gaza are facing appalling conditions with heavy rainfall and temperatures dropping. 1.3 million people still require urgent shelter support. More than half of health facilities are only partially functional and face shortages of essential medical equipment and supplies. The total collapse of sanitation infrastructure has left 740,000 people vulnerable to toxic flooding.”

Ayed Abu Ramadan, the chairman of the Gaza Chamber of Commerce, said that the current situation on the ground was a humanitarian catastrophe with “roughly nine hundred thousand people living in tents and on the streets without running water—sitting, sleeping, cooking, and going to the toilet in the same place, which is usually a tent that does not protect them from rain, or from sun or heat. Kids cannot go to school. There is no proper health care, no economy, no jobs. It’s really terrible.”

“Israel is allowing partial aid to come into Gaza. They are allowing, for example, rice and flour—things like that. But they are heavily restricting, for example, eggs, meat, and chicken. And, in order to bring in these things, you have to pay something called ‘coordination commissions’. For example, if you want to bring in a truckload of frozen chicken or meat, you sometimes have to pay as much as a hundred and thirty thousand dollars. Inflation is going up in Gaza, and people have lost their purchasing power because they are not working. Around eighty per cent of people are unemployed.

“Around ninety per cent of families are below the poverty line. Israel is preventing school supplies from entering Gaza. So even the informal school programs cannot really proceed. Health care is really a problem, because there are not enough medicines. Even for chronic diseases, for people with cholesterol or heart problems, only with great difficulty can they find some quantities of their needed medications. Israel is controlling the entry points, the crossings into Gaza, and preventing essential goods from entering. Basic necessities are prevented from coming in. So, it is a big problem,” he said.

Thousands of tents supplied by China, Egypt and Saudi Arabia to shelter displaced Palestinians in Gaza offer only limited protection against rain and wind, an assessment compiled by shelter specialists in the devastated territory has revealed.

Fierce storms in recent weeks blew down or damaged thousands of tents, affecting at least 235,000 people, according to UN estimates.

The Economist (20/12/25) reported that “of 35 hospitals and clinics in Gaza evaluated by the UN, six have been flattened, 11 are out of commission, only parts of 18 can be used and several hospitals are in the parts of the strip controlled by Israel are out of reach for most Politicians.  Of the 18 partially functioning hospitals and clinics 16 cannot dispose of infectious waste properly, 15 do not have dependable electricity, 13 lack decent toilets and sinks and 11 lack reliable clean water.”

On top of all this the Israeli Government has passed a law effectively blocking aid organisations – such Oxfam, Action Aid, International Rescue Committee and Médecins Sans Frontieres from working in Gaza.

Sadly, there hasn’t been much about this in the Australian media – nor the rhetoric of Australian politicians.