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It was about 8:30 PM on a weekday evening when I headed back 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 just a gentle sprinkle, but following a brief walk the rain intensified abruptly. This was expected. I stopped near a tent, clapping my hands to fight off the chill. A young boy sat nearby selling baked goods. We exchanged a few words during my pause, although he appeared disengaged. I observed the cookies were loosely wrapped in plastic, dampened from the drizzle, and I pondered if he’d manage to sell them all before the night ended. The cold seeped into everything.

A Trek Through a Place of Tents

Walking down al-Wehda Street in Gaza City, canvas structures flanked both sides of the road. There were no voices from inside them, just the noise of rain pouring down and the whistle of the wind. Quickening my pace, attempting to avoid the rain, I turned on my mobile phone's torch to illuminate the path. I couldn't stop thinking to those huddled within: What occupies them now? What are they thinking? What are they experiencing? The cold was piercing. I imagined children nestled under wet blankets, parents adjusting repeatedly to keep them warm.

When I opened the door to my apartment, the icy doorknob served as a understated yet stark reminder of the hardships endured across Gaza in these harsh winter conditions. I walked into my apartment and was overwhelmed by the guilt of enjoying a dry home when countless others faced exposure to the storm.

The Darkness Escalates

During the darkest hours, the storm grew stronger. Outside, makeshift covers on broken panes billowed and tore, while metal sheets broke away and fell with a clatter. Above it all came the piercing, fearful cries of children, shattering the darkness. I felt completely helpless.

Over the past two weeks, the rain has been incessant. Chilly, dense, and propelled by strong winds, it has flooded makeshift homes, swamped refugee areas and turned open ground into mud. In other places, this might be called “bad weather”. In Gaza, it is lived with exposure and abandonment.

The Cruelest Season

Locals call 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 real onset of winter, the moment when the season reveals its full force. Typically, it is endured with preparation and shelter. This year, Gaza has no such defenses. The frost seeps 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, rescue operations found the victims 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 are still unaccounted for. Such collapses are not the result of fresh strikes, but the result of homes weakened by months of bombardment and succumbing to winter rain. In recent days, a young child in Khan Younis passed away from exposure to the cold.

Fragile Shelters

Walking past the camp nearest my home, I witnessed the impact up close. Thin plastic sheets sagged under the weight of water, mattresses floated and clothes were perpetually moist, always damp. Each step reinforced how fragile these shelters were and how close the rain and cold came to taking life and health for countless individuals living in tents and cramped refuges.

Most of these people have already been forced from their homes, many on multiple occasions. Homes are lost. Neighbourhoods razed. Winter has come to Gaza, but protection from it has not. It has come lacking adequate housing, in darkness, without heating.

A Teacher's Anguish

As a university lecturer in Gaza, this weather weighs heavily on me. My students are not distant names; they are young people I speak to; smart, persistent, but profoundly exhausted. Most attend online classes from tents; others from cramped quarters where solitude is unattainable and connectivity unreliable. A significant number of pupils have already experienced bereavement. Most have lost their homes. Yet they still try to study. Their fortitude is remarkable, but it must not be demanded in this way.

In Gaza, what would usually be routine academic practices—projects, due dates—turn into questions of conscience, shaped each day by concern for students’ security, heat and ability to find refuge.

When the storm rages, I cannot help but wonder about them. Is their shelter holding? Are they warm? Could the storm have shredded through their shelter while they were trying to sleep? For those residing in apartments, or the shells that are left, there is a lack of heat. With electricity largely unavailable and fuel in short supply, warmth comes primarily through wearing multiple layers and using any remaining covers. Even so, cold nights are excruciating. How then those living in tents?

Aid and Abandonment

Figures show that more than a million people in Gaza reside in temporary housing. Aid supplies, including insulated tents, have been inadequate. During the recent storm, relief groups reported delivering plastic sheets, tents and mattresses to numerous households. On the ground, however, this assistance was widely experienced as inconsistent and lacking, limited to short-term fixes that did little against extended hardship to cold, wind and rain. Tents collapse. Sicknesses, hypothermia, and infections linked to damp conditions are on the upswing.

This cannot be described as an unforeseen disaster. Winter comes every year. People in Gaza interpret this shortcoming not as misfortune, but as neglect. People speak of how critical supplies are blocked or slowed, while attempts to reinforce weakened structures are frequently blocked. Grassroots projects have tried to improvise, to hand out tarps, yet they continue to be hampered by bureaucratic barriers. The culpability lies in political and humanitarian. Answers are available, but are kept out.

An Unnecessary Pain

What makes this suffering especially painful is how preventable it is. It is unconscionable to study, raise children, or fight illness standing ankle-deep in cold water inside a tent. No learner should dread the rain destroying their final textbook. Rain reveals just how precarious existence is. It tests bodies worn down by stress, exhaustion, and grief.

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