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It was about 8:30 PM on a Thursday when I returned home in Gaza City. Gusts of wind blew, and I couldn’t stay out any longer, so walking was my only option. Initially, it was just a gentle sprinkle, but a short distance later the rain became a downpour. This was expected. I paused beside a tent, trying to warm my hands to draw some warmth. A young boy was sitting outside selling baked goods. We exchanged a few words during my pause, but his attention was elsewhere. I observed the cookies were hastily covered in plastic, already soggy from the drizzle, and I pondered if he’d find buyers before the night ended. The freezing temperature invaded every space.

A Walk Through a Place of Tents

Walking down al-Wehda Street in Gaza City, makeshift shelters crowded both sides of the road. An eerie silence replaced voices from inside them, just the noise of falling water and the roar of the wind. As I hurried on, attempting to avoid the rain, I switched on my mobile phone's torch to illuminate the path. I couldn't stop thinking to those taking refuge within: What occupies them now? What is their state of mind? How do they feel? It was bitterly cold. I pictured children curled under wet blankets, parents moving restlessly to keep them warm.

Upon opening the door to my apartment, the freezing handle served as a understated yet stark reminder of the struggles borne across Gaza in these severe cold season. I walked into my apartment and couldn't shake the guilt of possessing shelter when a multitude remained unprotected to the storm.

The Midnight Hour Intensifies

In the middle of the night, the storm intensified. Outside, plastic sheeting on damaged glass whipped and strained, while metal sheets tore loose and fell with a clatter. Above it all came the desperate, terrified shouts of children, shattering the darkness. I felt utterly powerless.

During recent days, the rain has been unending. Chilly, dense, and propelled by strong winds, it has drenched shelters, flooded makeshift camps and turned open ground into mud. In other places, this might be called “inclement weather”. In Gaza, it is endured in a state of exposure and abandonment.

The Harshest Days

Locals call this time of year as al-Arba’iniya; the fourty most severe days of winter, commencing in late December and persisting to the end of January. It is the real onset of winter, the moment when the season shows its true power. Typically, it is faced with preparation and shelter. Now, Gaza has neither. The cold bites through homes, streets are empty and people simply endure.

But the threat posed by the cold is no longer abstract. In the early hours of Sunday before Christmas, recovery efforts found the victims of two children after the roof of a bombarded structure collapsed in northern Gaza, rescuing five others, including a child and two women. Two people are still unaccounted for. These incidents are not the result of fresh strikes, but the result of homes weakened by months of bombardment and ultimately defeated by winter rain. Earlier this month, a young child in Khan Younis passed away from exposure to the cold.

A Life in Tents

Walking past the camp nearest my home, I observed the results up close. Thin plastic sheets buckled beneath the weight of water, mattresses bobbed in water and clothes remained wet, incapable of drying. Each step reinforced how vulnerable these tents are and how close the rain and cold came to taking life and health for hundreds of thousands living in tents and overcrowded shelters.

The majority of these individuals have already been uprooted, many on multiple occasions. Homes are destroyed. Neighbourhoods flattened. Winter has come to Gaza, but shelter from its fury has not. It has come devoid of safe refuge, without electricity, devoid of warmth.

The Weight on Education

In my role as a professor in Gaza, this weather is a heavy burden. My students are not distant names; they are young people I speak to; intelligent, determined, but profoundly exhausted. Most join virtual lessons from tents; others from cramped quarters where privacy is impossible and connectivity unreliable. A significant number of pupils have already lost family members. Most have lost their homes. Yet they continue their education. Their perseverance is astounding, but it should not be required in this way.

In Gaza, what would typically constitute routine academic practices—assignments, deadlines—transform into moral negotiations, influenced daily by uncertainty about students’ security, heat and access to shelter.

During nights like these, I find myself thinking about them. Do they have dryness? Do they feel any warmth? Did the wind tear through their shelter during the night? For those remaining in apartments, or damaged structures, there is an absence of warmth. With electricity largely unavailable and fuel in short supply, warmth comes mainly from bundling up and using any remaining covers. Despite this, cold nights are unbearable. What, then those living in tents?

Aid and Abandonment

Figures show that over a million people in Gaza live in shelters. Aid supplies, including insulated tents, have been insufficient. During the recent storm, humanitarian partners reported providing plastic sheets, tents and mattresses to thousands of families. For those affected, however, this assistance was widely experienced as inconsistent and lacking, limited to band-aid measures that did little against extended hardship to cold, wind and rain. Tents collapse. Chest infections, hypothermia, and infections associated with damp conditions are rising.

This is not an unexpected catastrophe. Winter arrives cyclically. People in Gaza interpret this shortcoming not as bad luck, but as abandonment. People speak of how essential materials are blocked or slowed, while attempts to fix broken houses are repeatedly obstructed. Community efforts have tried to make do, to hand out tarps, yet they continue to be hampered by restrictions on imports. The root cause is political and humanitarian. Remedies are known, but are kept out.

A Preventable Suffering

The aspect that renders this pain especially heartbreaking is how avoidable it could have been. No one should have to study, raise children, or combat disease standing ankle-deep in cold water inside a tent. No learner should dread the rain damaging their precious phone. Rain exposes just how fragile life has become. It strains physiques worn down by pressure, weariness, and sorrow.

The current cold season occurs alongside the Christmas season that, for millions, epitomizes warmth, refuge and care for the disadvantaged. In Palestine, that {symbolism