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The time was approximately 8:30 PM on a Thursday when I made my way home in Gaza City. Gusts of wind blew, and I couldn’t stay out any longer, so I had to walk. Initially, it was only a light drizzle, but a short distance later the rain suddenly grew heavier. This was expected. I took shelter by a tent, trying to warm my hands to generate a little heat. A young boy was sitting outside selling sweet treats. We exchanged a few words while I stood there, but his attention was elsewhere. I noticed the cookies were poorly packaged in plastic, moist from the drizzle, and I pondered if he’d have enough to sell before the night ended. The cold seeped into everything.

A Trek Through a Place of Tents

As I walked along al-Wehda Street in Gaza City, tents lined both sides of the road. There were no voices from inside them, just the noise of rain pouring down and the moan of the wind. Rushing forward, seeking escape from the rain, I switched on my mobile phone's torch to see the road ahead. My mind continually drifted to those huddled within: How are they passing the time now? What thoughts fill their minds? What are they experiencing? A severe chill gripped the air. I pictured children curled under soaked bedding, parents moving restlessly to keep them warm.

Upon opening the door to my apartment, the icy doorknob 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 Worsens

In the middle of the night, the storm reached its peak. Outside, makeshift covers on broken panes sagged and flapped violently, while metal sheets broke away and crashed to the ground. Cutting through the chaos came the piercing, fearful cries of children, shattering the darkness. I felt completely helpless.

During recent days, the rain has been incessant. Freezing, pouring, and carried by strong winds, it has flooded makeshift homes, swamped refugee areas and turned bare earth into mud. In different contexts, this might be called “poor conditions”. In Gaza, it is experienced amidst exposure and abandonment.

Al-Arba’iniya

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 definite start of winter, the moment when the season reveals its full force. Ordinarily, it is endured with preparation and shelter. Currently, Gaza has neither. The cold bites through homes, streets are vacant and people simply endure.

But the danger of winter is far from theoretical. On the Sunday morning before Christmas, rescue operations retrieved the remains of two children after the roof of a war-damaged building collapsed in northern Gaza, rescuing five others, including a child and two women. Two people remain missing. These incidents are not new attacks, but the outcome of homes compromised after months of bombardment and finally undone by winter rain. In recent days, 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. Thin plastic sheets sagged under the weight of water, mattresses were adrift and clothes remained wet, never fully drying. Each step reminded me how precarious these dwellings are and how close the rain and cold came to taking life and health for hundreds of thousands living in tents and cramped refuges.

A great number of these residents have already been forced from their homes, many repeatedly. Homes are gone. Neighbourhoods leveled. Winter has arrived in Gaza, but shelter from its fury has not. It has come lacking adequate housing, with no power, devoid of warmth.

A Teacher's Anguish

As a university lecturer in Gaza, this weather causes deep concern. My students are not figures in a report; they are young people I speak to; bright, resilient, 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 experienced bereavement. Most have been rendered homeless. Yet they persist in learning. Their perseverance is astounding, but it must not be demanded in this way.

In Gaza, what would usually be routine academic practices—assignments, deadlines—transform into moral negotiations, influenced daily by anxiety over students’ security, heat and ability to find refuge.

During nights like these, I am constantly preoccupied about them. Is their shelter holding? Do they feel any warmth? Could the storm have shredded 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 largely unavailable and fuel scarce, warmth comes mainly from wearing multiple layers and using whatever blankets are left. Nonetheless, cold nights are excruciating. What about those living in tents?

Aid and Abandonment

Agencies state that well over a million people in Gaza live in shelters. Aid supplies, including thermal blankets, have been insufficient. Amid the last tempest, humanitarian partners reported providing tarpaulins, tents and bedding to numerous households. On the ground, however, this assistance was often perceived as inconsistent and lacking, limited to band-aid measures that offered scant protection against extended hardship to cold, wind and rain. Shelters fail. Chest infections, hypothermia, and infections linked to damp conditions are rising.

This is not an unforeseen disaster. Winter arrives cyclically. People in Gaza understand this failure not as fate, but as abandonment. People speak of how essential materials are hindered or postponed, while attempts to fix broken houses are repeatedly obstructed. Grassroots projects have tried to make do, to provide coverings, yet they are still constrained by bureaucratic barriers. The failure is political and humanitarian. Remedies are known, but are withheld.

A Symbolic Season

What makes this suffering especially painful is how avoidable it could have been. 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 strains physiques worn down by anxiety, fatigue, and loss.

This winter coincides with the Christmas season that, for millions, epitomizes warmth, refuge and care for the disadvantaged. In Palestine, that {symbolism