More than 800,000 Gazans are at risk from flooding, the UN says, as a powerful winter storm sweeps through the Strip.

The heavy rain has already deluged camps, and led several buildings to collapse.

A steady stream of water trickles through openings in the tent Ghadir al-Adham shares with her husband and six children in Gaza City. Her family is still displaced after the war, and waiting for reconstruction to begin.

“Here we are, living a life of humiliation,” she told the BBC. “We want caravans. We want our homes rebuilt. We long for concrete to keep us warm. Every day I sit and cry for my children.”

Two months into an American-imposed ceasefire, Gaza is stuck in the first phase of Donald Trump’s peace plan – its territory divided between the warring parties, its people still displaced and surrounded by rubble.

Plans for new homes – and new government – lie frozen in the next stage of Donald Trump’s peace deal, as the search continues for Israel’s last remaining hostage, Ran Gvili.

Israel’s prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, has insisted Hamas must return all Israel’s hostages – living and dead – before the two sides move on to the next, more difficult, stage of the peace deal.

But several searches of Gaza’s rubble have so far shown no sign of him. Gvili was captured during the 7 October Hamas attacks – a police officer, recovering from a broken shoulder, who went to defend nearby kibbutz Alumim.

His parents, Talik and Itzik, were told last year he had not survived.

Their road to their home in Meitar, in southern Israel, is lined with banners paying tribute to him, the yellow flags of remembrance for Israel’s hostages fluttering alongside.

“They stole our kid, they stole him,” his mother Talik told me.

“They know where he is,” Itzik said. “They just try to hide or keep him. They’re play[ing] with us.”

They believe Hamas wants to keep their son as an insurance policy against future negotiations, after returning all the other hostages, both living and dead.

In response, a Hamas official told the BBC their allegations were untrue, and that Israel was trying to avoid implementing the agreement.

But with no sign of Gvili’s body, and pressure from Washington growing, his parents say they are counting on Israel’s leaders not to move forward before their son is found.

“Everyone in Israel[‘s] government says to us, ‘No, we don’t move to the second level until Ran comes back.’ This is their promise,” Talik said.

Many in Israel believe it would be politically difficult for Netanyahu to carry out the next steps in the deal, including withdrawing Israeli forces further back towards Gaza’s perimeter, if even one hostage is still missing in Gaza.

Both Israel and Hamas face difficult concessions in the next stage of the deal. For Hamas, it means handing over weapons and power. For Israel, handing over security to an international stabilisation force.

And this is also why leaders on both sides may be hesitating, says retired General Israel Ziv, a former head of Israel’s military Operations Directorate.

“Israel and Hamas are sharing the same interests not to move so fast into the second stage,” he told me. “Hamas doesn’t want to lose control, and the Israeli side for political reasons also prefer to stay in Gaza, as nobody wants to explain to their base that they have to withdraw.”

He says Trump is the only one who can force the two sides forward, and that time is running out.

“By waiting I think we might miss the opportunity because Hamas is reorganising and [its] strength is coming back,” he explained. “We have to take a deep breath and go forward with that plan, because staying in the situation as it is, it’s the worst-case scenario.”

Disarming Hamas – in a way both sides will accept – is seen as the first major hurdle. Without that, no foreign countries are likely to commit troops to secure the Strip, and no reconstruction is likely to begin in Hamas-controlled areas.

Earlier this week, Netanyahu suggested he was sceptical that foreign nations could complete the task in place of Israel.

“Our friends in America want to try to establish an international force that will do the job,” he said. “We know that there are certain tasks that this force can do. I don’t want to go into detail, they can’t do everything, and maybe they can’t do the main thing, but we’ll see.”

Gaza is currently divided in two by the so-called yellow line, marking the limits of Israeli forces under the first stage of the ceasefire deal.

Israel’s military chief of staff recently referred to it as a “new border line”, sparking accusations that Israel was signalling an intention to remain there long term.

Key issues, including how to disarm Hamas, are due to be discussed at a meeting between Israel’s prime minister and Donald Trump in Florida later this month.

The US president – who has already brokered a ceasefire in Gaza and pushed his peace plan through the UN Security Council – has been outspoken about his desire to move the process forward.

He told journalists this week that he would announce the membership of a newly created Board of Peace for Gaza early next year. “It will be one of the most legendary boards ever… Everybody wants to be on it,” he said.

There are also widespread reports that, under pressure from Washington, Israel is beginning work to clear rubble, in preparation for a new temporary housing project in the Israeli-held area of Rafah, in the south of the Strip.

The new housing could reportedly provide shelter for tens of thousands of Gazans, on condition that they are willing to cross into Israeli-held areas, and submit to checks for any links to Hamas.

Some see it as part of a plan to draw Gazans across into Israeli-held areas, in order to isolate Hamas. A small number of people have already crossed into these areas, to camps set up by armed groups supported by Israel there.

But many Gazans – even those who want to replace Hamas – say they refuse to live under Israeli control.

It’s a glimpse of an alternative future for Gaza, if this second stage of Trump’s plan fails; a future where Gaza, already divided, becomes more divided still.

As a winter storm batters the Gaza Strip, Huda Abu Jazar, has been preparing her tent for floods while in Qatar, her son Ehab gets ready for one of the biggest football matches Palestine has ever played.

The head coach of the national team – who comes from Rafah in the south of Gaza – has told sports journalists that he dedicates his side’s qualification in the quarterfinals of the Fifa Arab Cup to his mother.

“From the womb of suffering, success is born,” Mrs Abu Jazar says of the Palestinian footballers’ recent achievements. “They feel for us, and they know what has happened to us, and they are doing the impossible to bring joy to the Palestinian people.”

After two years of devastating war, Gazans have crammed into coffee shops since the start of the month to watch their side play. Palestine dramatically beat Asian champions, Qatar, 1-0 in the opening game of the tournament, memorably prompting Ehab Abu Jazar to break into a run along the touchline, jumping in the air and hugging his players.

They then came back from 2-0 down to draw their second match against Tunisia.

On Sunday, a goalless draw put Palestine through to the quarterfinals of the Arab Cup for the first time. They play Saudi Arabia in Qatar on Thursday.

Ehab Abu Jazar has been out of Gaza during the devastating two-year-war triggered by the deadly Hamas-led assault on southern Israel in October 2023.

When he calls his mother, he says that she offers him tips, rather than dwelling on her own difficult living conditions.

“She talks to me about nothing but the team. She wants the focus to remain solely on the tournament,” the 45-year-old manager told AFP news agency. “My mother asks me about the players, who will play as starters and who will be absent, about the tactics, the morale of the players and the circumstances surrounding them.”

Most of the Palestine team have never been to Gaza – they come from the occupied West Bank, East Jerusalem and the diaspora, or are Palestinian citizens of Israel.

For many Palestinians they are a symbol of national unity. And Israel’s war on Hamas has been felt deeply by all.

Many prominent Palestinian players have been killed in Israeli attacks in Gaza.

In September, the Palestine national team paid tribute to a former captain, Suleiman al-Obeid, before their friendly match against Malaysia.

Obeid, who was known as the Pelé of Palestine, was a father-of-five. An Israeli strike had destroyed his family’s home in Shati refugee camp in Gaza City, and they had been displaced multiple times by bombings and evacuation orders.

Tarrad al-Obeid told the BBC that, even though his brother had saved a good sum of money playing football before the war, he had been left with nothing to buy food.

“We had to move seven times. Even if you had a mountain of money, it would get finished by doing all this!” he said.

“He used to go to the aid centres and then stopped. Then he went again and was telling me that bullets had grazed near his head and that quadcopters were firing at aid seekers,” Suleiman’s wife, Doaa, said. “He would keep repeating that he didn’t want to go and I would tell him not to and that we would be ok.”

Ultimately, Tarrad al-Obeid said that “it was need” that drove him and Suleiman with a group of others to one of the US and Israeli-backed Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF) aid sites in early August.

“We were taking cover behind a sand barrier,” he recalled. “Suddenly a quadcopter came and directly filmed Suleiman. Then, it turned around and got prepared to fire and directly hit him. Suleiman died immediately together with four or five others.”

The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) told the BBC that, after an initial review, it found no record of casualties from Israeli fire at aid distribution points on the day that Suleiman al-Obeid was killed. At the time, GHF did not respond to a request for comment.

The GHF began operations in Gaza from May until November, ceasing after the ceasefire came into effect. There were regular reports of Israeli forces killing people at its sites. The IDF typically said its troops fired warning shots but denied targeting civilians.

The IDF has razed most buildings in Rafah and the house of the coach and those of his mother and brother have been destroyed.

“Every match and every tournament is an opportunity to prove ourselves, and through the Arab Cup, we are sending a message to the world that we are a people who love life,” Ehab Abu Jazar said in a news conference at the weekend.

“What the players offer on the field is an expression of the spirit and determination of our people.”

The wet weather in Gaza may make it even harder for Palestinians to watch the upcoming Arab Cup match. Many have been using mobile phones to follow the Arab Cup, but the internet often cuts out.

Huda Abu Jazar is huddled down with Ehab’s brother and her grandchildren in a tent in a camp in al-Mawasi on Gaza’s southern coast.

“We’re suffering like any Palestinian family suffers in the Gaza Strip. There are shortages of everything. We lack water, we cook over fire, there’s no electricity,” she says.

“It’s cold and our tents get flooded.”

“There is no other joy than football,” she goes on.

“The national team made people happy, including the displaced people in tents. It achieved great accomplishments and made all Palestinians proud. God willing, they will be successful in the next match. May God honour my son!”

Aid agencies have reiterated calls for Israel to allow more tents and urgently needed supplies into Gaza after the first heavy winter rainfall, saying more than a quarter of a million families need emergency help with shelters.

“We are going to lose lives this winter. Children, families will perish,” says Jan Egeland, Secretary General of the Norwegian Refugee Council (NRC).

“It’s actually so frustrating that we’ve now lost so many crucial weeks since the adoption of the Trump peace plan, which said humanitarian aid would flow and the Palestinians would not needlessly continue to suffer.”

With a majority of the population displaced by two-years of a devastating war, most Gazans now live in tents – many of them makeshift.

They have been clearing up after widespread flooding due to a winter storm that began on Friday.

There are fears that diseases could spread as rainwater has mixed with sewage water.

“My children are already sick and look at what happened to our tent,” said Fatima Hamdona, crying in the rain over the weekend, as she showed a BBC freelance journalist the ankle-deep puddle inside her temporary home in Gaza City.

“We don’t have food – the flour got all wet. We’re people who’ve been destroyed. Where do we go? There’s no shelter for us to go to now.”

The story was the same in the southern city of Khan Younis.

“Our clothes, mattresses and blankets were flooded,” said Nihad Shabat, as she tried to dry out her possessions there on Monday.

Her family has been sleeping inside a shelter made of sheets and blankets.

“We’re worried about getting flooded again. We cannot afford to buy a tent.”

A recent UN report found that across Gaza more than 80% of buildings had been destroyed and 92% in Gaza City.

According to the NRC – which has long led the so-called Shelter Cluster in Gaza, made up of some 20 non-governmental organisations (NGOs) – about 260,000 Palestinian families, or about 1.5 million people, are in need of emergency shelter assistance, lacking the basics to get through winter.

The NGOs say they have been able to get only about 19,000 tents into Gaza since the US-brokered Israel-Hamas ceasefire took effect on 10 October.

They say they have 44,000 pallets of aid – containing non-food items, including tents and bedding – blocked from entering. Supplies that have been bought are currently stuck in Egypt, Jordan and Israel.

Jan Egeland blames what he calls “a bureaucratic, military, politicised quagmire” running “counter to all humanitarian principles” for the hold-up.

In March, Israel introduced a new registration process for aid groups working in Gaza, citing security reasons. It requires that they give lists of their local Palestinian staff.

However, aid groups say that data protection laws in donor countries prevent them from handing over such information.

Many items, including tent poles, are also classed as “dual-use” by Israel, meaning they have a military as well as civilian purpose, and their entry is banned or heavily restricted.

The BBC has asked Cogat, the Israeli defence body that controls the border crossings, for details on numbers of imported tents but it has yet to respond.

On Sunday it posted on X: “Over the last few months, in preparation for the winter and protection from the rain, COGAT coordinated with the international community and facilitated close to 140,000 tarpaulins directly to the residents of the Gaza Strip.”

“We call on international organizations to coordinate more tents and tarpaulins and other winter humanitarian responses.”

It says it is working with the new US-led Civil-Military Coordination Center (CMCC) that has been set up in southern Israel and other international partners to plan “a catered humanitarian response for the upcoming winter”.

International aid groups are hoping that the CMCC – which will oversee implementation of President Trump’s 20-point Gaza peace plan – will help ease restrictions on their work.

With a foreign donor conference on reconstruction in the Palestinian territory expected to take place in Egypt soon, they say basic shelter supplies must be allowed to enter while longer-term plans are developed.

“It would not be a good thing if all these nations meet in Cairo to discuss long-term reconstruction for Palestinians in great need if they die before their high-rise buildings can be reconstructed,” says Mr Egeland, who was previously the UN’s Emergency Relief Coordinator.

“They need a tent today, they don’t need a promise of a beachfront structure in five years.”

Palestinians have told the BBC that many tents – brought in by international agencies and Gulf donors – have been stolen and are available on the black market in Gaza.

They say that with a small increase in supply, prices have dropped from about $2,700 (2,330 euros; £2,050) before the ceasefire, to around $900-$1,000.

There are pleas for international help to distribute more shelters, more fairly.

“I hope everyone will join with us to end this crisis we’re living through,” says Alaa al-Dirghali in Khan Younis. “The tents endured two years under the sun and two years under the rain and they couldn’t last this downpour.”

“Until this moment, people are re-erecting these broken tents because they don’t have any alternative. I pray to God that those responsible for handing out tents will give them to those who actually need them. They’re getting stolen and sold to people at a very expensive price.”

In Gaza City, Rami Deif Allah, who was displaced from Beit Hanoun, was drying out soaked mattresses in the weak sunshine, with his elderly mother and children.

He said a relative had given him a waterproof tent but that it was still flooded.

“We evacuated about 11 times and there was no safe place for us so we took shelter in these humble tents but it was all in vain. When the rain came they couldn’t protect us,” he said. “The water flooded us from above and below.”

Like all Gazans, Rami longs for a permanent dwelling.

“We pray for this war to be fully over, and for everyone to return to their homes,” he went on. “Even if we don’t find our houses standing, with our sweat and blood we will rebuild. This situation of living out on the streets is unbearable.”