A Gaza father’s struggle to survive winter in a hole dug by hand for his family

Nevin Al Sukari - Sana'a - Palestinian father Tayseer Obaid who was displaced with his family from the north of the besieged Gaza Strip, sits with his children in a trench he dug in his tent in an attempt to protect them from the cold and Israeli strikes, in a makeshift camp in Deir el-Balah January 8, 2025, as the war between Israel and the Palestinian Hamas movement continues. — AFP pic

PALESTINIAN TERRITORIES, Jan 13 — Faced with plunging temperatures and heavy rain in war-battered central Gaza’s Deir el-Balah, displaced Palestinian father Tayseer Obaid resorted to digging for a modicum of domestic comfort.

In the clay soil of the encampment area that his family has been displaced to by the war, Obaid dug a square hole nearly two metres deep and capped it with a tarpaulin stretched over an improvised wooden A-frame to keep out the rain.

“I had an idea to dig into the ground to expand the space as it was very limited,” Obaid said.

“So I dug 90 centimetres, it was okay and I felt the space get a little bigger”, he said from the shelter while his children played in a small swing he attached to the plank that serves as a beam for the tarpaulin.

In time, Obaid managed to dig 180cm deep (about six feet) and then lined the bottom with mattresses, at which point, he said, “it felt comfortable, sort of”.

With old flour sacks that he filled with sand, he paved the entry to the shelter to keep it from getting muddy, while he carved steps into the side of the pit.

Tayseer Obaid prepares to dig a trench in his tent in an attempt to protect his children from the cold and Israeli strikes, in a makeshift camp in Deir el-Balah January 8, 2025. — AFP pic

The clay soil is both soft enough to be dug without power tools and strong enough to stand on its own.

The pit provides some protection from Israeli air strikes, but Obaid said he feared the clay soil could collapse should a strike land close enough.

“If an explosion happened around us and the soil collapsed, this shelter would become our grave”.

Makeshift shelters

Nearly all of Gaza’s 2.4 million inhabitants have been displaced by the war that has ravaged the Palestinian territory for over 14 months.

The UN’s satellite centre (Unosat) determined in September 2024 that 66 per cent of Gaza’s buildings had been damaged or completely destroyed by the war, in which Israel has made extensive use of air strikes as it fights the militant group Hamas.

For Palestinian civilians fleeing the fighting, the lack of safe buildings means many have had to gather in makeshift camps, mostly in central and southern Gaza.

Shortages caused by the complete blockade of the coastal territory mean that construction materials are scarce, and the displaced must make do with what is at hand.

Palestinian girls sit on swings in their tent as their father Tayseer Obaid digs a trench in an attempt to protect his children from the cold and Israeli strikes, in a makeshift camp in Deir el-Balah January 8, 2025. — AFP pic

‘Freezing to death’

On top of the hygiene problems created by the lack of proper water and sanitation for the thousands of people crammed into the camps, winter weather has brought its own set of hardships.

On Thursday, the UN’s Palestinian refugee agency, UNRWA, warned that eight newborns died of hypothermia and 74 children died “amid the brutal conditions of winter” in 2025.

“We enter this New Year carrying the same horrors as the last — there’s been no progress and no solace. Children are now freezing to death,” UNRWA’s spokeswoman Louise Wateridge said.

At least 46,537 Palestinians, a majority of them civilians, have been killed in Israel’s military campaign in Gaza since the war began, according to data provided by the health ministry. The United Nations has acknowledged these figures as reliable.

The October 7 attack that triggered the war resulted in the deaths of 1,208 people on the Israeli side, most of them civilians, according to an AFP tally based on official Israeli figures, which includes hostages killed in captivity.

A Palestinian girl exits a tent where her father Tayseer Obaid dug a trench in an attempt to protect his children from the cold and Israeli strikes, in a makeshift camp in Deir el-Balah January 8, 2025. — AFP pic

Obaid’s sunken shelter provides some protection from the cold winter nights, but not enough.

For warmth, he dug a chimney-like structure and fireplace in which he burns discarded paper and cardboard.

Though Obaid improved his lot, his situation remains bleak. “If I had a better option, I wouldn’t be living in a hole that looks like a grave”, he says. — AFP