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It was about 8:30 PM on a Thursday when I returned home in Gaza City. The wind howled, making it impossible to remain any longer, leaving me to walk. At first, it was merely a soft rain, but after about 200 metres the rain became a downpour. That wasn’t surprising. I took shelter by a tent, rubbing my palms together to generate a little heat. A young boy had positioned himself selling sweet treats. We spoke briefly while I stood there, but his attention was elsewhere. I observed the cookies were hastily covered in plastic, already soggy from the drizzle, and I questioned if he’d have enough to sell before the night ended. The cold seeped into everything.

A Walk Through a Landscape of Tents

While traversing al-Wehda Street in Gaza City, canvas structures flanked both sides of the road. No sounds of conversation came from inside them, merely the din of falling water and the moan of the wind. As I hurried on, trying to dodge the rain, I turned on my mobile phone's torch to see the road ahead. I couldn't stop thinking to those huddled within: What are they doing now? What is their state of mind? How do they feel? The cold was piercing. I envisioned children huddled under wet blankets, parents shifting constantly to keep them warm.

When I opened the door to my apartment, the icy doorknob served as a understated yet stark reminder of the suffering faced across Gaza in these brutal winter climate. I walked into my apartment and was overwhelmed by the guilt of having a roof when a multitude remained unprotected to the storm.

The Midnight Hour Escalates

As midnight passed, the storm reached its peak. Outside, tarps on shattered windows whipped and strained, while metal sheets broke away and crashed to the ground. Above it all came the piercing, fearful cries of children, piercing the darkness. I felt utterly powerless.

During recent days, the rain has been relentless. Freezing, pouring, and carried by strong winds, it has drenched shelters, flooded makeshift camps and turned open ground into mud. In different contexts, this might be called “poor conditions”. In Gaza, it is lived with exposure and abandonment.

The Cruelest Season

Palestinians know this time of year as al-Arba’iniya; the most bitter forty days of winter, beginning in late December and continuing through the end of January. It is the definite start of winter, the moment when the season reveals its full force. Normally, it is weathered through preparation and shelter. This year, Gaza has no such defenses. The cold bites through homes, streets are vacant and people just persevere.

But the peril of the season is no longer abstract. On the Sunday morning before Christmas, rescue operations recovered the bodies of two children after the roof of a shelled home collapsed in northern Gaza, saving five more people, including a child and two women. Two people have not been found. Such collapses are not new attacks, but the outcome of homes damaged from months of bombardment and finally undone by winter rain. Not long ago, an eight-month-old baby girl in Khan Younis passed away from exposure to the cold.

Fragile Shelters

Observing the camp nearest my home, I saw the consequences up close. Thin plastic sheets buckled beneath the weight of water, mattresses were adrift and clothes hung damply, incapable of drying. Each step reinforced how precarious these dwellings are and how close the rain and cold came to taking life and health for countless individuals living in tents and cramped refuges.

The majority of these individuals have already been uprooted, many several times over. Homes are gone. Neighbourhoods razed. Winter has descended upon Gaza, but shelter from its fury has not. It has come devoid of safe refuge, without electricity, devoid of warmth.

A Teacher's Anguish

As a university lecturer in Gaza, this weather causes deep concern. My students are not distant names; they are faces I recognize; intelligent, determined, but deeply weary. Most participate in digital sessions from tents; others from overcrowded shelters where personal space doesn't exist and connectivity intermittent. Countless learners have already lost family members. Most have been rendered homeless. Yet they continue their education. Their fortitude is remarkable, but it must not be demanded in this way.

In Gaza, what would usually be routine academic practices—assignments, deadlines—become questions of conscience, dictated every moment by concern for students’ well-being, comfort and proximity to protection.

On evenings such as this, I find myself thinking about them. Is their shelter holding? Do they feel any warmth? Has the gale ripped through their shelter while they were trying to sleep? For those residing in apartments, or damaged structures, there is an absence of warmth. With electricity mostly absent and fuel scarce, warmth comes mainly from bundling up and using the few bedding items available. Nonetheless, cold nights are intolerable. How then those living in tents?

The Humanitarian Shortfall

Agencies state that more than a million people in Gaza live in shelters. Aid supplies, including thermal blankets, have been insufficient. During the recent storm, relief groups reported delivering tarpaulins, tents and bedding to numerous households. For those affected, however, this assistance was frequently felt to be patchy and insufficient, limited to band-aid measures that offered scant protection against extended hardship to cold, wind and rain. Tents collapse. Chest infections, hypothermia, and infections caused by damp conditions are rising.

This cannot be described as an unforeseen disaster. Winter comes every year. People in Gaza understand this failure not as fate, but as being forsaken. People speak of how essential materials are restricted or delayed, while attempts to fix broken houses are repeatedly obstructed. Grassroots projects have tried to improvise, to distribute plastic sheeting, yet they are still constrained by restrictions on imports. The root cause is political and humanitarian. Remedies are known, but are kept out.

A Symbolic Season

What makes this suffering especially agonizing is how avoidable it could have been. No one should have to study, raise children, or battle sickness standing ankle-deep in cold water inside a tent. No learner should dread the rain damaging their precious phone. Rain reveals just how precarious existence is. It strains physiques worn down by anxiety, fatigue, and loss.

This winter aligns with the Christmas season that, for millions, represents warmth, refuge and care for the disadvantaged. In Palestine, that {symbolism