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The clock read around 8:30 PM on a weekday evening when I returned home in Gaza City. The wind howled, forcing me inside any longer, so I had to walk. Initially, it was just a gentle sprinkle, but a short distance later the rain intensified abruptly. That wasn’t surprising. I took shelter by a tent, clapping my hands to generate a little heat. A young boy sat nearby selling baked goods. We shared brief remarks while I stood there, but his attention was elsewhere. I saw the cookies were loosely wrapped in plastic, moist from the drizzle, and I pondered if he’d find buyers before the night ended. A deep chill permeated the air.

A Walk Through a Landscape of Tents

Walking down al-Wehda Street in Gaza City, makeshift shelters crowded both sides of the road. An eerie silence replaced voices from inside them, just the noise of rain pouring down and the roar of the wind. Rushing forward, trying to dodge the rain, I activated my mobile phone's torch to see the road ahead. My mind continually drifted to those huddled within: What are they doing now? What are they thinking? What are they experiencing? It was bitterly cold. I imagined children curled under damp covers, parents adjusting repeatedly to keep them warm.

Upon opening the door to my apartment, the freezing handle served as a understated yet stark reminder of the struggles borne across Gaza in these harsh winter conditions. I entered my apartment and was overwhelmed by the guilt of enjoying a dry home when a multitude remained unprotected to the storm.

The Midnight Hour Escalates

In the middle of the night, the storm grew stronger. Outside, plastic sheeting on damaged glass whipped and strained, while tin roofing tore loose and slammed down. Overriding the noise came the sharp, panicked screams of children, piercing the darkness. I felt utterly powerless.

For the last fortnight, the rain has been unending. Chilly, dense, and propelled by strong winds, it has flooded makeshift homes, flooded makeshift camps and turned open ground into mud. In other places, 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 most bitter forty days of winter, starting from late December and continuing through the end of January. It is the true beginning of winter, the moment when the season reveals its full force. Typically, it is endured with preparation and shelter. Currently, Gaza has no such defenses. The chill penetrates through homes, streets are deserted and people merely survive.

But the threat posed by the cold is no longer abstract. On the Sunday morning before Christmas, civil defense teams recovered the bodies 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 remain missing. Such collapses are not new attacks, but the result of homes compromised after months of bombardment and ultimately defeated by winter rain. Earlier this month, an eight-month-old baby girl in Khan Younis died of exposure to the cold.

Fragile Shelters

Walking past the camp nearest my home, I observed the results up close. Flimsy tarpaulins sagged under the weight of water, mattresses bobbed in water and clothes were perpetually moist, incapable of drying. Each step reinforced how vulnerable these tents are and how close the rain and cold came to claiming life and health for a vast population living in tents and overcrowded shelters.

A great number of these residents have already been displaced, many several times over. Homes are lost. Neighbourhoods leveled. Winter has come to Gaza, but shelter from its fury has not. It has come lacking adequate housing, with no power, 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 faces I recognize; bright, resilient, but deeply weary. Most participate in digital sessions from tents; others from overcrowded shelters where solitude is unattainable and connectivity sporadic. Countless learners have already experienced bereavement. Most have lost their homes. Yet they continue their education. Their resilience is extraordinary, but it must not be demanded in this way.

In Gaza, what would typically constitute routine academic practices—assignments, deadlines—become moral negotiations, dictated every moment by uncertainty about students’ security, heat and proximity to protection.

On evenings such as this, I am constantly preoccupied about them. Is their shelter holding? Is there heat? Has the gale ripped through their shelter during the night? For those residing in apartments, or damaged structures, there is no heating. With electricity mostly absent and fuel in short supply, warmth comes mostly via donning extra clothing and using whatever blankets are left. Nonetheless, cold nights are unbearable. How then those living in tents?

Aid and Abandonment

Agencies state that more than a million people in Gaza live in shelters. Relief items, including insulated tents, have been insufficient. Amid the last tempest, humanitarian partners reported distributing plastic sheets, tents and mattresses to a multitude of people. On the ground, however, this assistance was widely experienced as uneven and inadequate, limited to band-aid measures that did little against extended hardship to cold, wind and rain. Tents collapse. Chest infections, hypothermia, and infections linked to damp conditions are rising.

This cannot be described as an unforeseen disaster. Winter is an annual event. People in Gaza understand this failure not as misfortune, but as abandonment. People speak of how necessary items are restricted or delayed, while attempts to fix broken houses are consistently hampered. Local initiatives have tried to improvise, to distribute plastic sheeting, yet they remain limited by restrictions on imports. The root cause is political and humanitarian. Solutions exist, but are prevented from arriving.

A Symbolic Season

The aspect that renders this pain especially agonizing is how preventable it is. No individual ought to study, raise children, or combat disease standing knee-high in cold water inside a tent. It is wrong for a pupil to worry about the rain ruining their last notebook. Rain reveals just how fragile life has become. 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 most vulnerable. In Palestine, that {symbolism