[Source: BBC]

The beaches of Gaza are no longer for day trips. Tens of thousands of people now have to live on the coastline, forced to leave their homes during the war.

In recent days they have come under a new kind of assault: from winter seas battering their flimsy, makeshift dwellings.

Nearly all of Gaza’s 2.3 million population is now displaced and nine in ten of those living in shelters are in tents, the UN says.

With temperatures plummeting, many people have been falling sick. There have been floods of rainwater and sewage.

While the situation is worst in the north, UN officials are warning of dire shortages of medicines, food, shelter and fuel across Gaza, describing the situation as “catastrophic.”

There are long queues for charity handouts in parts of central and southern Gaza where most people are living.

On successive days, our local cameramen have filmed hundreds of people crowding outside bakeries where there is very little bread. At times, there are crushes as those waiting surge forward.

At the Kerem Shalom crossing, Israel’s main crossing point with Gaza, last week journalists were shown lorries moving goods that had gone through security checks.

Aid entering the Palestinian territory remains at some of the lowest levels of the past year. Israel blames aid agencies for distribution problems.

“Unfortunately we’re still seeing that the biggest backlog for humanitarian aid getting to where it needs to get to is the distribution capabilities of the international organizations, as the 800 trucks worth of aid around me attest to,” said Shimon Freedman, spokesman for Cogat, part of the Israeli military that control the crossings.

But inside Gaza, humanitarian workers say armed gangs have been looting incoming supplies brought through Kerem Shalom amid increased lawlessness. This has now led the biggest UN agency operating in the territory, Unrwa, to pause its use of this route for deliveries.

The overall picture, says Antoine Renard, local head of the UN’s World Food Programme, is of Palestinians facing “a daily struggle for survival”.

Amid the destruction in Gaza, there is still no end in sight to the war. Just the expectation of more suffering, as cold weather sets in.