More than 150,000 tents purchased for displaced families in Gaza are waiting outside the territory because Israeli authorities have not granted permission for them to enter, the United Nations said on 11 November, as winter storms flood camps and shelter stocks inside Gaza run out.

UN Deputy Spokesperson Farhan Haq told reporters at UN headquarters in New York that the tents had been bought by humanitarian partners and UN member states and were ready to be sent. "Ultimately, we need the cooperation of the Israeli authorities to grant permission for us to bring these tents in," Haq said. "We certainly can be getting more in. We just need the permissions from the Israeli authorities to get them in through the various checkpoints."

117,000 tents held in Egypt

About 117,000 of the waiting tents were supplied by the Egyptian Relief Committee and are stored at a logistics facility in Al-Arish, Egypt, according to the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA). The remainder are held by other aid organisations and governments outside Gaza.

The scale of the need is enormous. OCHA estimates that about 1.4 million people in Gaza — roughly 65 per cent of the population — are still living in tents and makeshift shelters, more than a year after a ceasefire took effect in October 2025. Stocks of tents, tarpaulins, blankets and clothing inside Gaza are "virtually exhausted", the agency said, and a further 121,000 tents are still needed, along with hundreds of thousands of tarpaulins and mattresses.

Storm floods 70,000 tents

The warning follows Gaza's first major winter storm, which brought heavy rain and strong winds from 6 November through the weekend. Flooding spread across all five of the Strip's governorates, and a rain-soaked sand dune collapsed onto tents at the Al Berka Reservoir west of Deir al-Balah, killing five people — three children and two women — and injuring others. An infant was also reported drowned.

By 8 November, humanitarian partners had received appeals from more than 26,000 households whose shelters or belongings were damaged. Gaza's Government Media Office put the number of flooded tents at more than 70,000, while OCHA's initial assessment recorded more than 6,000 family shelters destroyed and another 17,400 damaged.

UN humanitarian chief Tom Fletcher said on 11 November that foreign ministers and partners had previously told him progress on aid would be difficult until after Israel's elections — and that he was now being told to wait for a government to form. He rejected waiting as an excuse for delaying winter supplies.

Israel disputes the blame

Israel disputes responsibility for the bottleneck. Its Coordinator of Government Activities in the Territories (COGAT) said more than 91,000 tents and over 8,200 trucks carrying tarpaulins, blankets and winter clothing had entered Gaza since September under a winter plan. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu rejected claims that Israel was delaying winter aid and blamed Hamas for Palestinian suffering.

The dispute has drawn rare public criticism from the Board of Peace chaired by US President Donald Trump, which on Monday called the situation an "immediate humanitarian emergency". The UN said on Tuesday that it agreed with that assessment.

With more storms expected and $186.5 million in winterisation funding still unmet, aid agencies warn that families are entering their fourth winter in tents that cannot withstand even moderate rain. Unless the waiting tents are allowed in, they say, the flooding of the past week will be repeated — with worse consequences — as winter deepens.