This summer in Western Europe, there is constant talk of “unprecedented heatwaves”. According to the media, authorities are working hard to help people cope with and protect themselves from the adverse effects of sweltering temperatures.
As someone in Gaza, it is hard not to be grimly amused by this panic.
After all, as temperatures began to rise, my homeland – at least what remains of it – has been transformed into an open-air furnace.
Now, in the middle of another hot, humid Mediterranean summer, we don’t even have the bare minimum to shield ourselves from the heat. I read report after report advising Europeans to stay indoors, stay hydrated, use sun cream and avoid strenuous outdoor activity. Meanwhile, we in Gaza have no homes, no water, no shade and no escape.
We cannot “limit outdoor activity” because everything we need to survive is outside: water trucks that may come twice a week if we’re lucky, food distributions, firewood to scavenge. We cannot “stay hydrated” because water is scarce, rationed and often polluted. And sunscreen? We would sooner find medicine on Mars.
Summer in Gaza used to be a season of joy with beach days, courtyard gardens, a breeze under the trees. But the ongoing Israeli onslaught has turned it into a season of torment. The beaches are blockaded. The courtyards are rubble. The trees are ash. Israel has flattened most of Gaza, turning soil into dust, parks into deserts and cities into graveyards. Gaza is now a shadeless city.
The heat itself has become a silent killer. But Gaza’s deadly summer is not natural. It is not just another consequence of climate change either. It is Israel’s making. The endless bombing has created greenhouse gas emissions and thick layers of dust and pollutants. Fires burn unchecked. Garbage piles rot in the sun. Farmland is razed. What was once a climate crisis is now climate cruelty, engineered by military force.
The irony is bitter: Europe blames its heatwaves on a meteorological “heat dome”, a bubble of trapped hot air. But Israel has trapped us in another kind of dome: overcrowded nylon tents that act like ovens in the sun. These camps are not shelters – they are slow-cooking chambers. They trap heat, stink, fear and grief. And we, the displaced, have nowhere else to go.
Summer is no longer a season I look forward to. It is a dilemma I endure. The sun hangs overhead like a sentence. It scorches the ground beneath my feet so that even my slippers burn. I cannot stay inside the tent during the day. It is too hot to breathe. But I cannot be outside for long either. I must go. I must wait in long lines for water, then again for food – under a sun so punishing I fear sunstroke as much as starvation.
We are told to queue with discipline, but how can you queue when your body is faint and your child is hungry? I push forward through crowds, not out of greed, but desperation. I scavenge for fuel – wood, plastic, anything to burn. I return to my tent only to collapse into more heat.
The nights offer no mercy. With most of Gaza’s population now crammed near the coastline, the tents radiate heat back at each other. Unlike the earth, they do not cool after sunset. They store the suffering. I feel my neighbours’ breath, their sweat, their sorrow as if the heat itself is contagious. Insects swarm us in waves, drawn to the warmth. My mother and sister swat them away as if they were the bombs we can still hear in the distance.
Living in a tent for a second summer should make it easier. It doesn’t. It makes it worse.
Last summer, after being displaced from our home in eastern Khan Younis, we at least had some food variety. There were still deliveries of aid. We could still cook. But since March 2 when Israel blocked humanitarian aid again, we have descended into engineered starvation.
The United States and Israel now stage a grotesque theatre called the “Gaza Humanitarian Foundation” to distribute flour. They place sacks of flour inside metal cages as if we are livestock. People are forced to queue for hours under an open sky, stripped of shade and dignity. Soldiers scream at them to take off their hats, lie face down on blazing asphalt, crawl for food. After all that, you might still leave empty-handed – if you’re not shot first.
They have lowered the bar of our existence. We no longer ask for safety or shelter. We ask only: Do we have enough food to last the day?
Israel has combined every tool of deprivation: heat without shade, thirst without water, hunger without hope. There is no electricity to run desalination or pumping stations. No fuel to chill the little water that comes. No flour, no fish, no markets. For many of us, this summer could be our last.
This is not a climate crisis. This is weather used as a weapon – a war waged not only with bombs and bullets but also with heat, thirst and slow death. Gaza is not just burning – it is being suffocated under a man-made sun. And the world watches, calls it a “conflict” and checks the forecast.
The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Al Jazeera’s editorial stance.
