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The time was approximately 8:30 PM on a Thursday when I returned home in Gaza City. A strong wind was blowing, forcing me inside any longer, so walking was my only option. In the beginning, it was only a light drizzle, but following a brief walk the rain became a downpour. This was expected. I stopped near a tent, clapping my hands to generate a little heat. A young boy was sitting outside selling sweet treats. We exchanged a few words as I waited, although he appeared disengaged. I observed the cookies were poorly packaged in plastic, moist from the drizzle, and I pondered if he’d manage to sell them all before the night ended. The freezing temperature invaded every space.

A Walk Through a Landscape 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, only the sound of falling water and the whistle of the wind. As I hurried on, attempting to avoid the rain, I activated my mobile phone's torch to see the road ahead. I couldn't stop thinking to those huddled within: What occupies them now? What are they thinking? How do they feel? The cold was piercing. I envisioned children huddled under wet blankets, parents adjusting repeatedly to keep them warm.

When I opened the door to my apartment, the cold metal served as a understated yet stark reminder of the struggles borne across Gaza in these brutal winter climate. I stepped inside my apartment and felt consumed by the guilt of possessing shelter when a multitude remained unprotected to the storm.

The Darkness Worsens

In the middle of the night, the storm intensified. Outside, tarps on shattered windows sagged and flapped violently, while metal sheets tore loose and crashed to the ground. Overriding the noise came the sharp, panicked screams of children, piercing the darkness. I felt totally incapable.

For the last fortnight, the rain has been incessant. Chilly, dense, and propelled by strong winds, it has soaked tents, inundated temporary settlements and turned the soil into mud. Elsewhere, this might be called “bad 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 true beginning of winter, the moment when the season unleashes its intensity. Typically, it is endured with preparation and shelter. Currently, Gaza has no such defenses. The cold bites through homes, streets are vacant and people simply endure.

But the threat posed by the cold is no longer abstract. Early on the Sunday before Christmas, rescue operations found the victims of two children after the roof of a war-damaged building collapsed in northern Gaza, saving five more people, including a child and two women. Two people are still unaccounted for. Such collapses are not caused by ongoing hostilities, but the consequence of homes compromised after months of bombardment and ultimately defeated by winter rain. Not long ago, an infant in Khan Younis succumbed to exposure to the cold.

A Life in Tents

Observing the camp nearest my home, I saw the consequences up close. Inadequate coverings buckled beneath the weight of water, mattresses were adrift and clothes hung damply, never fully drying. Each step reminded me how vulnerable these tents are and how close the rain and cold threatened life and health for a vast population living in tents and overcrowded shelters.

The majority of these individuals have already been displaced, many repeatedly. Homes are gone. Neighbourhoods leveled. Winter has come to Gaza, but shelter from its fury has not. It has come lacking adequate housing, in darkness, lacking heat.

The Weight on Education

In my role as a professor in Gaza, this weather weighs heavily on me. My students are not mere statistics; they are faces I recognize; intelligent, determined, but extremely fatigued. Most join virtual lessons from tents; others from cramped quarters where privacy is impossible and connectivity unreliable. A significant number of pupils have already experienced bereavement. Most have been rendered homeless. Yet they persist in learning. Their fortitude is remarkable, but it must not be demanded in this way.

In Gaza, what would typically constitute routine academic practices—tasks, schedules—transform into questions of conscience, dictated every moment by anxiety over students’ safety, warmth and proximity to protection.

During nights like these, I am constantly preoccupied about them. Are they dry? Are they warm? Did the wind tear through their shelter as they attempted to rest? For those residing in apartments, or the shells that are left, there is no heating. With electricity scarce and fuel in short supply, warmth comes mainly from donning extra clothing and using any remaining covers. Even so, cold nights are intolerable. What, then those living in tents?

The Humanitarian Shortfall

Agencies state that over a million people in Gaza exist in makeshift accommodations. Aid supplies, including insulated tents, have been insufficient. When the cyclone hit, relief groups reported distributing plastic sheets, tents and mattresses to thousands of families. For those affected, however, this assistance was widely experienced as patchy and insufficient, limited to temporary solutions that did little against ongoing suffering to cold, wind and rain. Structures give way. Sicknesses, hypothermia, and infections linked to damp conditions are rising.

This is not an unforeseen disaster. Winter arrives cyclically. People in Gaza view this crisis not as bad luck, but as abandonment. People speak of how critical supplies are hindered or postponed, while attempts to repair damaged homes are consistently hampered. Local initiatives have tried to make do, to hand out tarps, yet they are still constrained by bureaucratic barriers. The culpability lies in political and humanitarian. Solutions exist, but are kept out.

A Symbolic Season

The factor that intensifies this hardship especially heartbreaking is how unnecessary it should be. It is unconscionable to study, raise children, or battle sickness standing knee-high in cold water inside a tent. No learner should dread the rain ruining their last notebook. Rain reveals just how precarious existence is. It strains physiques worn down by anxiety, fatigue, and loss.

This year's chill aligns with the Christmas season that, for millions, epitomizes warmth, refuge and care for the neediest. In Palestine, that {symbolism