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The clock read around 8:30 PM on a weekday evening when I made my way home in Gaza City. A strong wind was blowing, and I couldn’t stay out any longer, leaving me to walk. At first, it was only a light drizzle, but following a brief walk the rain suddenly grew heavier. This was expected. I paused beside a tent, rubbing my palms together to draw some warmth. A young boy had positioned himself selling homemade cookies. We shared brief remarks as I waited, though he didn’t seem interested. I observed the cookies were poorly packaged in plastic, moist from the drizzle, and I questioned if he’d manage to sell them all before the night ended. The freezing temperature invaded every space.

A Trek Through a Place of Tents

Walking down al-Wehda Street in Gaza City, makeshift shelters crowded both sides of the road. No sounds of conversation came from inside them, just the noise of falling water and the roar of the wind. Rushing forward, attempting to avoid the rain, I turned on my mobile phone's torch to see the road ahead. I couldn't stop thinking to those taking refuge within: How are they passing the time now? What is their state of mind? What emotions do they hold? A severe chill gripped the air. I pictured children huddled under soaked bedding, parents adjusting repeatedly to keep them warm.

As I unlocked the door to my apartment, the icy doorknob served as a quiet but powerful reminder of the suffering faced across Gaza in these harsh winter conditions. I stepped inside my apartment and felt consumed by the guilt of possessing shelter when a multitude remained unprotected to the storm.

The Midnight Hour Intensifies

As midnight passed, the storm intensified. Outside, plastic sheeting on broken panes sagged and flapped violently, while tin roofing ripped free and crashed to the ground. Overriding the noise came the sharp, panicked screams of children, cutting through the darkness. I felt utterly powerless.

For the last fortnight, the rain has been unending. Cold, heavy, and driven by strong winds, it has flooded makeshift homes, swamped refugee areas and turned open ground into mud. In different contexts, this might be called “poor conditions”. In Gaza, it is endured in a state of exposure and abandonment.

The Harshest Days

Residents refer to this time of year as al-Arba’iniya; the fourty most severe days of winter, beginning in late December and lasting until the end of January. It is the true beginning of winter, the moment when the season reveals its full force. Normally, it is endured with preparation and shelter. This year, Gaza has none of these. The cold bites through homes, streets are vacant and people just persevere.

But the threat posed by the cold is now very real. On the Sunday morning before Christmas, recovery efforts retrieved the remains of two children after the roof of a shelled home collapsed in northern Gaza, rescuing five others, including a child and two women. Two people remain missing. These incidents are not caused by ongoing hostilities, but the result 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 died of exposure to the cold.

Precarious Existence

Passing by the camp nearest my home, I witnessed the impact up close. Flimsy tarpaulins sagged under the weight of water, mattresses were adrift and clothes were perpetually moist, incapable of drying. Each step reminded me how vulnerable these tents 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 on multiple occasions. Homes are gone. Neighbourhoods razed. Winter has descended upon Gaza, but shelter from its fury has not. It has come without proper shelter, in darkness, lacking heat.

A Teacher's Anguish

In my role as a professor in Gaza, this weather weighs heavily on me. My students are not distant names; they are young people I speak to; intelligent, determined, but profoundly exhausted. Most attend online classes from tents; others from overcrowded shelters where privacy is impossible and connectivity intermittent. Many of my students have already lost family members. Most have seen their houses destroyed. Yet they still try to study. Their perseverance is astounding, but it ought not be necessary in this way.

In Gaza, what would typically constitute routine academic practices—projects, due dates—turn into questions of conscience, dictated every moment by anxiety over students’ security, heat and ability to find refuge.

When the storm rages, I am constantly preoccupied about them. Do they have dryness? 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 a lack of heat. With electricity mostly absent and fuel rare, warmth comes primarily through donning extra clothing and using any remaining covers. Even so, cold nights are intolerable. How then those living in tents?

Aid and Abandonment

Figures show that over a million people in Gaza reside in temporary housing. Aid supplies, including weatherproof shelters, have been insufficient. When the cyclone hit, aid organizations reported delivering tarpaulins, tents and bedding to thousands of families. On the ground, however, this assistance was often perceived as uneven and inadequate, limited to temporary solutions that offered scant protection against prolonged exposure to cold, wind and rain. Structures give way. Respiratory illnesses, hypothermia, and infections associated with damp conditions are on the upswing.

This is not an unforeseen disaster. Winter arrives cyclically. People in Gaza view this crisis not as bad luck, but as neglect. People speak of how essential materials are restricted or delayed, while attempts to repair damaged homes are consistently hampered. Grassroots projects have tried to find solutions, to distribute plastic sheeting, yet they continue to be hampered by restrictions on imports. The failure is political and humanitarian. Remedies are known, but are withheld.

A Preventable Suffering

The factor that intensifies this hardship especially agonizing is how avoidable it could have been. No individual ought to study, raise children, or combat disease standing ankle-deep in cold water inside a tent. No student should fear the rain destroying their final textbook. Rain reveals just how vulnerable survival is. It challenges health worn down by pressure, weariness, and sorrow.

The current cold season aligns with the Christmas season that, for millions, epitomizes warmth, refuge and care for the neediest. In Palestine, that {symbolism