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Gaza Residents Face ‘Winter War’ with No Aid

Palestinians use donkey carts to cross a rain-flooded street in Khan Younis in southern Gaza on Saturday (DPA)
Palestinians use donkey carts to cross a rain-flooded street in Khan Younis in southern Gaza on Saturday (DPA)
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Gaza Residents Face ‘Winter War’ with No Aid

Palestinians use donkey carts to cross a rain-flooded street in Khan Younis in southern Gaza on Saturday (DPA)
Palestinians use donkey carts to cross a rain-flooded street in Khan Younis in southern Gaza on Saturday (DPA)

Palestinian territories, particularly the Gaza Strip, were hit by a winter storm that piled new hardship on residents, especially those living in tents that have frayed after two years of displacement and the Israeli war that destroyed their homes and even shelters.

With no alternative, families were left with tents that flooded along with the clothes, bedding and belongings inside, as rainwater swept through the makeshift encampments.

Hundreds, and likely thousands, of tents were submerged over recent days, Thursday, Friday and Saturday, as heavy rain accompanied the storm system that is expected to taper off Sunday evening.

It is the first winter storm to strike Gaza this season, and it appears set to be a harsh one for an estimated one million three hundred and seventy thousand displaced people living in tents across the enclave.

In Gaza’s port, once a gathering point for fishermen and a popular spot where residents would sit, eat and drink, the war turned the area into a command site for Israeli operations before the troops withdrew. It later became a refuge for tens of thousands of Gazans who pitched their tents there.

Testimonies of hardship

Riham al-Kafarneh, 49, from Beit Hanoun in northern Gaza, lives with her family of seven in a tent that filled with rainwater, soaking bedding, blankets and clothes. She said she barely managed, with one of her sons, to pull three of her grandchildren to safety as the water nearly swept them out of the tent.

“It was extremely difficult for us at dawn on Saturday as the storm intensified and the rain grew heavier. We were flooded even more than on Friday,” she told Asharq Al-Awsat, noting that waves had risen sharply and hit the edges of the port’s breakwater before parts of the water pushed into the tents. This made conditions worse for her family and for thousands of others living along the exposed edge of the port, compared with those deeper inside.

Al-Kafarneh said that after the war halted, she believed conditions would improve and that caravans and proper tents would be brought in, but “we saw nothing except more destruction of homes.”

Switching to her local dialect, she added: “We are exhausted and fed up with this life. We want to live like other people. Winter is just beginning and harder days are coming, and that is why we need someone to help us.”

The United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) said the rains have made conditions even harsher for Gaza’s residents, forcing families to seek shelter anywhere available, including fragile temporary tents. It stressed its urgent need for shelter supplies already stockpiled and called for permission to bring them into Gaza.

Ahmed al-Kafarneh, Riham’s 19-year-old middle son, said the scenes remind him of what he once saw in Syria.

“We thought those images on the news were just distant pictures, but now I understand what those displaced Syrians went through, living in tents and watching them flood,” he said.

Ahmed said international and local organizations, as well as self-styled “initiators” who collect money abroad to assist residents, have fallen far short.

Israeli restrictions

The UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) said that since the ceasefire began on October 11, Israeli authorities have refused 23 requests from nine partners to bring in nearly four thousand pallets of essential supplies, including tents, insulation and framing materials, mattresses, kitchen sets and blankets.

The Israeli war has damaged more than 90 percent of residential buildings in Gaza, either fully or partially, leaving about one and a half million Palestinians in tents that barely shield them from summer heat or winter cold. Several thousand others live in partially damaged homes that have also flooded, raising fears that some structures could collapse.

On the western edge of Shujaiya, east of Gaza City, more than 120 families, with an average of five members each, live in torn and worn-out tents that are barely suitable even in summer. All of them were completely flooded during the latest rains.

Rami Abu Sakran, 31, said he, his wife and two children live in a tent no larger than three meters, but they have no choice since he cannot afford rent for one of the few remaining houses or even an empty storage room to protect his family from winter and illness.

“My children already had the flu before the storm, and now with winter and the cold, their health is even worse,” he told Asharq Al-Awsat.

His tent was fully flooded, forcing him to spend Friday night in a small, partially damaged room inside an empty house he fears could collapse at any moment, which is why he had avoided staying there before.

Abu Sakran returned to his tent Saturday morning to find it submerged in rain and sewage water amid a completely ruined infrastructure and no functioning drains.

Standing outside, he said: “We do not know where to go or what to do. Life’s crises are chasing us, and nobody sees us or is willing to stand with us.” He said the sand barrier he built before the storm to stop water from seeping in failed to spare his family a harsh winter.

UN spokesperson Stéphane Dujarric said he feared that “thousands of displaced families are now fully exposed to severe weather conditions, raising serious health and protection concerns.”

The Association of Gaza Strip Municipalities said the storm has worsened an already catastrophic situation. Drainage networks are destroyed, causing sewage to overflow, and garbage is piling up near tents, homes and shelters. It called for urgent international intervention.

The association said it has wide plans to handle storm systems and assist residents, but a lack of equipment has prevented action, contributing to damage to thousands of tents and the soaking of displaced people’s clothes and bedding amid a total absence of basic living conditions.

Gaza’s Civil Defense said its teams cannot handle flooding cases because equipment was destroyed by Israel, while municipal services are makeshift and unable to meet needs. “This storm is only the beginning of a harsh winter that may witness major tragedies, with the risk of collapsing cracked and damaged homes under heavy rain,” it warned.

Disappointment over truce agreement

Gaza residents had pinned hopes on rapid implementation of the ceasefire agreement, which would allow caravans, proper tents and other relief supplies to enter. But Israel continues to stall and has delayed moving to the second phase, which includes reconstruction.

Hamas said the “tragic situation underlines the urgent need for relief and shelter,” calling on guarantors of the agreement, the United Nations, the Arab League and the Organization of Islamic Cooperation to act quickly to deliver humanitarian, medical and shelter supplies to Gaza, and to increase field, popular and official support to protect displaced families and secure a minimum standard of dignity amid catastrophic conditions.

The Palestinian presidency urged the international community, particularly the United States and the countries guaranteeing the ceasefire, to pressure Israel to speed up entry of prefab homes and tents to protect civilians from severe weather.

It called for lifting Israeli restrictions that prevent the Palestinian government from bringing mobile homes, tents and shelter materials into Gaza, saying the dire humanitarian situation exposes children, women and the elderly to grave danger.

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Features

Russia, China Unlikely to Back Iran Against US Military Threats

A man stands by the wreckage of a burnt bus bearing a banner (unseen) that reads "This was one of Tehran’s new buses that was paid for with the money of the people’s taxes,” in Tehran's Sadeghieh Square on January 15, 2026. (AFP)
A man stands by the wreckage of a burnt bus bearing a banner (unseen) that reads "This was one of Tehran’s new buses that was paid for with the money of the people’s taxes,” in Tehran's Sadeghieh Square on January 15, 2026. (AFP)
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Russia, China Unlikely to Back Iran Against US Military Threats

A man stands by the wreckage of a burnt bus bearing a banner (unseen) that reads "This was one of Tehran’s new buses that was paid for with the money of the people’s taxes,” in Tehran's Sadeghieh Square on January 15, 2026. (AFP)
A man stands by the wreckage of a burnt bus bearing a banner (unseen) that reads "This was one of Tehran’s new buses that was paid for with the money of the people’s taxes,” in Tehran's Sadeghieh Square on January 15, 2026. (AFP)

While Russia and China are ready to back protest-rocked Iran under threat by US President Donald Trump, that support would diminish in the face of US military action, experts told AFP.

Iran is a significant ally to the two nuclear powers, providing drones to Russia and oil to China. But analysts told AFP the two superpowers would only offer diplomatic and economic aid to Tehran, to avoid a showdown with Washington.

"China and Russia don't want to go head-to-head with the US over Iran," said Ellie Geranmayeh, a senior policy expert for the European Council on Foreign Relations think tank.

Tehran, despite its best efforts over decades, has failed to establish a formal alliance with Moscow and Beijing, she noted.

If the United States carried out strikes on Iran, "both the Chinese and the Russians will prioritize their bilateral relationship with Washington", Geranmayeh said.

China has to maintain a "delicate" rapprochement with the Trump administration, she argued, while Russia wants to keep the United States involved in talks on ending the war in Ukraine.

"They both have much higher priorities than Iran."

- Ukraine before Iran -

Despite their close ties, "Russia-Iranian treaties don't include military support" -- only political, diplomatic and economic aid, Russian analyst Sergei Markov told AFP.

Alexander Gabuev, director of Carnegie Russia Eurasia Center, said Moscow would do whatever it could "to keep the regime afloat".

But "Russia's options are very limited," he added.

Faced with its own economic crisis, "Russia cannot become a giant market for Iranian products" nor can it provide "a lavish loan", Gabuev said.

Nikita Smagin, a specialist in Russia-Iran relations, said that in the event of US strikes, Russia could do "almost nothing".

"They don't want to risk military confrontation with other great powers like the US -- but at the same time, they're ready to send weaponry to Iran," he said.

"Using Iran as a bargaining asset is a normal thing for Russia," Smagin said of the longer-term strategy, at a time when Moscow is also negotiating with Washington on Ukraine.

Markov agreed. "The Ukrainian crisis is much more important for Russia than the Iranian crisis," he argued.

- Chinese restraint -

China is also ready to help Tehran "economically, technologically, militarily and politically" as it confronts non-military US actions such as trade pressure and cyberattacks, Hua Po, a Beijing-based independent political observer, told AFP.

If the United States launched strikes, China "would strengthen its economic ties with Iran and help it militarize in order to contribute to bogging the United States down in a war in the Middle East," he added.

Until now, China has been cautious and expressed itself "with restraint", weighing the stakes of oil and regional stability, said Iran-China relations researcher Theo Nencini of Sciences Po Grenoble.

"China is benefiting from a weakened Iran, which allows it to secure low-cost oil... and to acquire a sizeable geopolitical partner," he said.

However, he added: "I find it hard to see them engaging in a showdown with the Americans over Iran."

Beijing would likely issue condemnations, but not retaliate, he said.

Hua said the Iran crisis was unlikely to have an impact on China-US relations overall.

"The Iranian question isn't at the heart of relations between the two countries," he argued.

"Neither will sever ties with the other over Iran."

Features

Beirut’s Commodore Hotel, a Haven for Journalists During Lebanon’s Civil War, Shuts Down

People stand outside the closed Commodore hotel, in Beirut, Lebanon, Sunday, Jan. 11, 2026. (AP)
People stand outside the closed Commodore hotel, in Beirut, Lebanon, Sunday, Jan. 11, 2026. (AP)
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Beirut’s Commodore Hotel, a Haven for Journalists During Lebanon’s Civil War, Shuts Down

People stand outside the closed Commodore hotel, in Beirut, Lebanon, Sunday, Jan. 11, 2026. (AP)
People stand outside the closed Commodore hotel, in Beirut, Lebanon, Sunday, Jan. 11, 2026. (AP)

During Lebanon’s civil war, the Commodore Hotel in western Beirut's Hamra district became iconic among the foreign press corps.

For many, it served as an unofficial newsroom where they could file dispatches even when communications systems were down elsewhere. Armed guards at the door provided some sense of protection as sniper fights and shelling were turning the cosmopolitan city to rubble.

The hotel even had its own much-loved mascot: a cheeky parrot.

The Commodore endured for decades after the 15-year civil war ended in 1990 — until this week, when it closed for good.

The main gate of the nine-story hotel with more than 200 rooms was shuttered Monday. Officials at the Commodore refused to speak to the media about the decision to close.

Although the country’s economy is beginning to recover from a protracted financial crisis that began in 2019, tensions in the region and the aftermath of the Israel-Hezbollah war that was halted by a tenuous ceasefire in November 2024 are keeping many tourists away. Lengthy daily electricity cuts force businesses to rely on expensive private generators.

The Commodore is not the first of the crisis-battered country’s once-bustling hotels to shut down in recent years.

But for journalists who lived, worked and filed their dispatches there, its demise hits particularly hard.

“The Commodore was a hub of information — various guerrilla leaders, diplomats, spies and of course scores of journalists circled the cafes and lounges,” said Tim Llewellyn, a former BBC Middle East correspondent who covered the civil war. “On one occasion (late Palestinian leader) Yasser Arafat himself dropped in to sip coffee with” with the hotel manager's father, he recalled.

A line to the outside world

At the height of the civil war, when telecommunications were dysfunctional and much of Beirut was cut off from the outside world, it was at the Commodore where journalists found land lines and Telex machines that always worked to send reports to their media organizations around the globe.

Across the front office desk in the wide lobby of the Commodore, there were two teleprinters that carried reports of The Associated Press and Reuters news agencies.

“The Commodore had a certain seedy charm. The rooms were basic, the mattresses lumpy and the meal fare wasn’t spectacular,” said Robert H. Reid, the AP’s former Middle East regional editor, who was among the AP journalists who covered the war. The hotel was across the street from the international agency’s Middle East head office at the time.

“The friendly staff and the camaraderie among the journalist-guests made the Commodore seem more like a social club where you could unwind after a day in one of the world’s most dangerous cities,” Reid said.

Llewellyn remembers that the hotel manager at the time, Yusuf Nazzal, told him in the late 1970s “that it was I who had given him the idea” to open such a hotel in a war zone.

Llewellyn said that during a long chat with Nazzal on a near-empty Middle East Airlines Jumbo flight from London to Beirut in the fall of 1975, he told him that there should be a hotel that would make sure journalists had good communications, “a street-wise and well-connected staff running the desks, the phones, the teletypes.”

During Israel's 1982 invasion of Lebanon and a nearly three-month siege of West Beirut by Israeli troops, journalists used the roof of the hotel to film fighter jets striking the city.

The parrot

One of the best-known characters at the Commodore was Coco the parrot, who was always in a cage near the bar. Patrons were often startled by what they thought was the whiz of an incoming shell, only to discover that it was Coco who made the sound.

AP’s chief Middle East correspondent Terry Anderson was a regular at the hotel before he was kidnapped in Beirut in 1985 and held for seven years, becoming one of the longest-held American hostages in history.

Videos of Anderson released by his kidnappers later showed him wearing a white T-shirt with the words “Hotel Commodore Lebanon.”

With the kidnapping of Anderson and other Western journalists, many foreign media workers left the predominantly-Muslim western part of Beirut, and after that the hotel lost its status as a safe haven for foreign journalists.

Ahmad Shbaro, who worked at different departments of the hotel until 1988, said the main reason behind the Commodore’s success was the presence of armed guards that made journalists feel secure in the middle of Beirut’s chaos as well as functioning telecommunications.

He added that the hotel also offered financial facilities for journalists who ran out of money. They would borrow money from Nazzal and their companies could pay him back by depositing money in his bank account in London.

Shbaro remembers a terrifying day in the late 1970s when the area of the hotel was heavily shelled and two rooms at the Commodore were hit.

“The hotel was full and all of us, staffers and journalists, spent the night at Le Casbah,” a famous nightclub in the basement of the building, he said.

In quieter times, journalists used to spend the night partying by the pool.

“It was a lifeline for the international media in West Beirut, where journalists filed, ate, slept, and hid from air raids, shelling, and other violence,” said former AP correspondent Scheherezade Faramarzi.

“It gained both fame and notoriety,” she said, speaking from the Mediterranean island of Cyprus.

The hotel was built in 1943 and kept functioning until 1987 when it was heavily damaged in fighting between Shiite and Druze militiamen at the time. The old Commodore building was later demolished and a new structure was build with an annex and officially opened again for the public in 1996.

But Coco the parrot was no longer at the bar. The bird went missing during the 1987 fighting. Shbaro said it is believed he was taken by one of the gunmen who stormed the hotel.

Features

Key Details of Greenland’s Rich but Largely Untapped Mineral Resources

Houses covered by snow are seen on the coast of a sea inlet of Nuuk, Greenland, on Monday, Jan. 12, 2026. (AP)
Houses covered by snow are seen on the coast of a sea inlet of Nuuk, Greenland, on Monday, Jan. 12, 2026. (AP)
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Key Details of Greenland’s Rich but Largely Untapped Mineral Resources

Houses covered by snow are seen on the coast of a sea inlet of Nuuk, Greenland, on Monday, Jan. 12, 2026. (AP)
Houses covered by snow are seen on the coast of a sea inlet of Nuuk, Greenland, on Monday, Jan. 12, 2026. (AP)

The Danish and Greenlandic foreign ministers will meet US Vice President JD Vance and Secretary of State Marco Rubio on Wednesday after President Donald Trump recently
stepped up threats to take over Greenland.

The autonomous territory of Denmark could be useful for the ​United States because of its strategic location and rich mineral resources. A 2023 survey showed that 25 of 34 minerals deemed "critical raw materials" by the European Commission were found in Greenland.

The extraction of oil and natural gas is banned in Greenland for environmental reasons, while development of its mining sector has been snarled in red tape and opposition from indigenous people.

Below are details of Greenland's main mineral deposits, based on data from its Mineral Resources Authority:

RARE EARTHS
Three of Greenland's biggest deposits are located in the southern province of Gardar.

Companies ‌seeking to ‌develop rare-earth mines are Critical Metals Corp, which bought the ‌Tanbreez ⁠deposit, ​Energy Transition Minerals, ‌whose Kuannersuit project is stalled amid legal disputes, and Neo Performance Materials.

Rare-earth elements are key to permanent magnets used in electric vehicles (EV) and wind turbines.

GRAPHITE
Occurrences of graphite and graphite schist are reported from many localities on the island.
GreenRoc has applied for an exploitation license to develop the Amitsoq graphite project.
Natural graphite is mostly used in EV batteries and steelmaking.

COPPER
According to the Mineral Resources Authority, most copper deposits have drawn only limited exploration campaigns.

Especially interesting are the underexplored areas ⁠in the northeast and center-east of Greenland, it said.

London-listed 80 Mile is seeking to develop the Disko-Nuussuaq deposit, which has ‌copper, nickel, platinum and cobalt.

NICKEL
Traces of nickel accumulations are numerous, ‍according to the Mineral Resources Authority.

Major miner ‍Anglo American was granted an exploration license in western Greenland in 2019 and has ‍been looking for nickel deposits, among others.

ZINC
Zinc is mostly found in the north in a geologic formation that stretches more than 2,500 km (1,550 miles).

Companies have sought to develop the Citronen Fjord zinc and lead project, which had been billed as one of the world's largest undeveloped zinc resources.

GOLD
The most prospective ​areas for gold potential are situated around the Sermiligaarsuk fjord in the country's south.

Amaroq Minerals launched a gold mine last year in Mt Nalunaq in ⁠the Kujalleq Municipality.

DIAMONDS
While most small diamonds and the largest stones are found in the island's west, their presence in other regions may also be significant.

IRON ORE
Deposits are located at Isua in southern West Greenland, at Itilliarsuk in central West Greenland, and in North West Greenland along the Lauge Koch Kyst.

TITANIUM-VANADIUM
Known deposits of titanium and vanadium are in the southwest, the east and south.

Titanium is used for commercial, medical and industrial purposes, while vanadium is mainly used to produce specialty steel alloys. The most important industrial vanadium compound, vanadium pentoxide, is used as a catalyst for the production of sulfuric acid.

TUNGSTEN
Used for several industrial applications, tungsten is mostly found in the central-east and northeast of the country, with assessed deposits in the south and west.

URANIUM
In 2021, ‌the then-ruling left-wing Inuit Ataqatigiit party banned uranium mining, effectively halting development of the Kuannersuit rare-earths project, which has uranium as a byproduct.