New Delhi, Dec. 12 -- GAZA - Torrential rains and gale-force winds battered the Gaza Strip on Friday, turning makeshift tent cities into swamps of despair and claiming at least a dozen lives in the past 24 hours alone. As Storm Byron, already notorious for the way it drowned displaced families while Israel blocked aid, ripped through the enclave again, flooded displacement camps exposed the hollow promises of a fragile ceasefire, with infants succumbing to hypothermia and families clinging to sodden belongings amid an unyielding aid blockade.

The catastrophe unfolded against a backdrop of protracted conflict, where over 1.9 million Palestinians, nearly the entire population, remain uprooted, crammed into coastal tent sprawls that offer n...