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It was approximately 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. At first, it was just a gentle sprinkle, but after about 200 metres the rain became a downpour. It came as no shock. I stopped near a tent, trying to warm my hands to generate a little heat. A young boy had positioned himself selling baked goods. We exchanged a few words as I waited, but his attention was elsewhere. I observed the cookies were hastily covered in plastic, dampened 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 Walk Through a Place of Tents

While traversing al-Wehda Street in Gaza City, canvas structures flanked both sides of the road. An eerie silence replaced voices from inside them, just the noise of falling water and the whistle of the wind. Quickening my pace, trying to dodge the rain, I switched on my mobile phone's torch to see the road ahead. My thoughts kept returning to those sheltering inside: How are they passing the time now? What are they thinking? What are they experiencing? A severe chill gripped the air. I imagined children huddled under damp covers, parents moving restlessly to keep them warm.

As I unlocked the door to my apartment, the freezing handle served as a quiet but powerful reminder of the hardships endured across Gaza in these severe cold season. I stepped inside my apartment and couldn't shake the guilt of possessing shelter when so many were exposed to the storm.

The Darkness Intensifies

As midnight passed, the storm grew stronger. Outside, makeshift covers on broken panes sagged and flapped violently, while metal sheets broke away and fell with a clatter. Cutting through the chaos came the desperate, terrified shouts of children, shattering the darkness. I felt totally incapable.

During recent days, the rain has been incessant. Freezing, pouring, and carried by strong winds, it has drenched shelters, flooded makeshift camps and turned bare earth into mud. In different contexts, this might be called “inclement weather”. In Gaza, it is experienced amidst exposure and abandonment.

The Harshest Days

Residents refer to this time of year as al-Arba’iniya; the fourty most severe days of winter, starting from late December and persisting to the end of January. It is the true beginning of winter, the moment when the season unleashes its intensity. Ordinarily, it is weathered through preparation and shelter. Now, Gaza has neither. The chill penetrates through homes, streets are empty and people just persevere.

But the peril of the season 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 war-damaged building collapsed in northern Gaza, saving five more people, including a child and two women. Two people are still unaccounted for. These incidents are not new attacks, but the consequence of homes weakened by months of bombardment and ultimately defeated by winter rain. Earlier this month, a young child in Khan Younis succumbed to exposure to the cold.

A Life in Tents

Passing by the camp nearest my home, I saw the consequences up close. Inadequate coverings buckled beneath the weight of water, mattresses bobbed in water and clothes remained wet, incapable of drying. Each step highlighted how fragile these shelters were and how close the rain and cold threatened life and health for countless individuals living in tents and cramped refuges.

A great number of these residents have already been uprooted, many on multiple occasions. Homes are destroyed. Neighbourhoods leveled. Winter has descended upon Gaza, but defense against it has not. It has come without proper shelter, in darkness, devoid of warmth.

A Teacher's Anguish

In my role as a professor in Gaza, this weather is a heavy burden. My students are not mere statistics; they are young people I speak to; bright, resilient, but extremely fatigued. Most join virtual lessons from tents; others from cramped quarters where solitude is unattainable and connectivity intermittent. A significant number of pupils have already experienced bereavement. Most have seen their houses destroyed. Yet they still try to study. Their fortitude is remarkable, but it should not be required in this way.

In Gaza, what would usually be routine academic practices—assignments, deadlines—turn into questions of conscience, shaped each day by uncertainty about students’ well-being, comfort and ability to find refuge.

When the storm rages, I find myself thinking about them. Is their shelter holding? Do they feel any warmth? Has the gale ripped through their shelter as they attempted to rest? For those still living in apartments, or the shells that are left, there is no heating. With electricity mostly absent and fuel rare, warmth comes mainly from donning extra clothing and using the few bedding items available. Nonetheless, cold nights are excruciating. What about those living in tents?

Political Failure

Figures show that well over a million people in Gaza live in shelters. Aid supplies, including thermal blankets, 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 inconsistent and lacking, limited to temporary solutions that were largely ineffective against ongoing suffering to cold, wind and rain. Shelters fail. Chest infections, hypothermia, and infections caused by damp conditions are increasing.

This is not an unforeseen disaster. Winter arrives cyclically. People in Gaza understand this failure not as bad luck, but as abandonment. People speak of how critical supplies are blocked or slowed, while attempts to fix broken houses are consistently hampered. Grassroots projects have tried to find solutions, 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 Preventable Suffering

What makes this suffering especially agonizing is how avoidable it could have been. No one should have to study, raise children, or fight illness standing ankle-deep in cold water inside a tent. No student should fear the rain destroying their final textbook. Rain lays bare just how vulnerable survival is. It tests bodies worn down by pressure, weariness, and sorrow.

This winter occurs alongside the Christmas season that, for millions, symbolises warmth, refuge and care for the neediest. In Palestine, that {symbolism