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The clock read about 8:30 PM on a Thursday when I made my way home in Gaza City. A strong wind was blowing, forcing me inside any longer, so walking was my only option. At first, it was only a light drizzle, but a short distance later the rain became a downpour. That wasn’t surprising. I paused beside a tent, rubbing my palms together to generate a little heat. A young boy had positioned himself selling baked goods. We spoke briefly as I waited, though he didn’t seem interested. I noticed the cookies were poorly packaged in plastic, moist from the drizzle, and I wondered if he’d have enough to sell before the night ended. The cold seeped into everything.

A Walk Through a Landscape 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, merely the din of torrential rain and the roar of the wind. Rushing forward, seeking escape from the rain, I activated 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 thoughts fill their minds? What are they experiencing? The cold was piercing. I pictured children curled under damp covers, parents moving restlessly to keep them warm.

When I opened the door to my apartment, the icy doorknob served as a subtle yet haunting reminder of the struggles borne across Gaza in these harsh winter conditions. I entered my apartment and was overwhelmed by the guilt of possessing shelter when so many were exposed to the storm.

The Midnight Hour Intensifies

During the darkest hours, the storm grew stronger. Outside, makeshift covers on shattered windows billowed and tore, while tin roofing broke away and slammed down. Cutting through the chaos came the desperate, terrified shouts of children, cutting through the darkness. I felt completely helpless.

During recent days, the rain has been incessant. Chilly, dense, and propelled by strong winds, it has flooded makeshift homes, inundated temporary settlements and turned bare earth into mud. In other places, this might be called “bad weather”. In Gaza, it is endured in a state of exposure and abandonment.

The Cruelest Season

Locals call this time of year as al-Arba’iniya; the fourty most severe days of winter, commencing 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 weathered through preparation and shelter. Now, Gaza has neither. The cold bites through homes, streets are empty and people simply endure.

But the peril of the season is no longer abstract. In the early hours of Sunday before Christmas, recovery efforts retrieved the remains of two children after the roof of a bombarded structure collapsed in northern Gaza, freeing five additional individuals, including a child and two women. Two people have not been found. These structural failures 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 passed away from exposure to the cold.

A Life in Tents

Observing the camp nearest my home, I observed the results up close. Thin plastic sheets strained under the weight of water, mattresses were adrift and clothes were perpetually moist, never fully drying. Each step reinforced how precarious these dwellings are and how close the rain and cold came to claiming life and health for countless individuals living in tents and packed sanctuaries.

Most of these people have already been displaced, many several times over. Homes are gone. Neighbourhoods leveled. Winter has come to Gaza, but protection from it has not. It has come devoid of safe refuge, in darkness, devoid of warmth.

The Weight on Education

In my role as a professor in Gaza, this weather causes deep concern. My students are not figures in a report; they are young people I speak to; intelligent, determined, but extremely fatigued. Most join virtual lessons from tents; others from overcrowded shelters where privacy is impossible and connectivity intermittent. Many of my students have already experienced bereavement. Most have been rendered homeless. Yet they still try to study. Their resilience is extraordinary, but it ought not be necessary in this way.

In Gaza, what would usually be routine academic practices—tasks, schedules—become questions of conscience, shaped each day by uncertainty about students’ safety, warmth and ability to find refuge.

During nights like these, I find myself thinking about them. Do they have dryness? Is there heat? Did the wind tear through their shelter while they were trying to sleep? For those remaining in apartments, or the shells that are left, there is a lack of heat. With electricity mostly absent and fuel in short supply, warmth comes mostly via wearing multiple layers and using whatever blankets are left. Despite this, cold nights are unbearable. How then those living in tents?

The Humanitarian Shortfall

Figures show that well over a million people in Gaza exist in makeshift accommodations. Relief items, including insulated tents, have been insufficient. Amid the last tempest, relief groups reported distributing plastic sheets, tents and mattresses to numerous households. On the ground, however, this assistance was often perceived as patchy and insufficient, limited to short-term fixes that offered scant protection against ongoing suffering to cold, wind and rain. Structures give way. Chest infections, hypothermia, and infections linked to damp conditions are rising.

This is not an unforeseen disaster. Winter is an annual event. People in Gaza understand this failure not as bad luck, but as abandonment. People speak of how necessary items are hindered or postponed, while attempts to reinforce weakened structures are repeatedly obstructed. Local initiatives have tried to improvise, to distribute plastic sheeting, yet they remain limited by restrictions on imports. The culpability lies in political and humanitarian. Solutions exist, but are prevented from arriving.

A Preventable Suffering

The factor that intensifies this hardship especially agonizing is how preventable it is. It is unconscionable to study, raise children, or fight illness standing ankle-deep in cold water inside a tent. It is wrong for a pupil to worry about the rain damaging their precious phone. Rain exposes just how fragile life has become. It challenges health worn down by anxiety, fatigue, and loss.

This year's chill coincides with the Christmas season that, for millions, symbolises warmth, refuge and care for the disadvantaged. In Palestine, that {symbolism