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It was about 8:30 PM on a Thursday when I headed back home in Gaza City. The wind howled, and I couldn’t stay out any longer, leaving me to walk. In the beginning, it was only a light drizzle, but a short distance later the rain intensified abruptly. This was expected. I paused beside a tent, trying to warm my hands to fight off the chill. A young boy had positioned himself selling baked goods. We exchanged a few words during my pause, although he appeared disengaged. I observed the cookies were poorly packaged in plastic, dampened from the drizzle, and I pondered if he’d find buyers before the night ended. The freezing temperature invaded every space.

A Trek Through a City 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, merely the din of rain pouring down and the roar of the wind. As I hurried on, attempting to avoid the rain, I activated my mobile phone's torch to light my way. I couldn't stop thinking to those sheltering inside: How are they passing the time now? What is their state of mind? What are they experiencing? It was bitterly cold. I imagined children nestled under wet blankets, parents adjusting repeatedly to keep them warm.

As I unlocked the door to my apartment, the freezing handle served as a quiet but powerful reminder of the struggles borne across Gaza in these severe cold season. I walked into my apartment and couldn't shake the guilt of enjoying a dry home when a multitude remained unprotected to the storm.

The Night Escalates

In the middle of the night, the storm intensified. Outside, makeshift covers on shattered windows whipped and strained, while tin roofing ripped free and crashed to the ground. Overriding the noise came the desperate, terrified shouts of children, piercing the darkness. I felt totally incapable.

For the last fortnight, the rain has been incessant. Cold, heavy, and driven by strong winds, it has soaked tents, swamped refugee areas and turned open ground into mud. Elsewhere, this might be called “bad weather”. In Gaza, it is experienced amidst exposure and abandonment.

The Harshest Days

Palestinians know this time of year as al-Arba’iniya; the 40 coldest and harshest days of winter, starting from late December and persisting to the end of January. It is the real onset of winter, the moment when the season reveals its full force. Normally, it is faced with preparation and shelter. Currently, Gaza has none of these. The chill penetrates through homes, streets are vacant and people merely survive.

But the peril of the season is far from theoretical. On the Sunday morning before Christmas, recovery efforts retrieved the remains of two children after the roof of a shelled home 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 succumbing to winter rain. In recent days, an eight-month-old baby girl in Khan Younis died of exposure to the cold.

A Life in Tents

Passing by the camp nearest my home, I observed the results up close. Inadequate coverings buckled beneath the weight of water, mattresses bobbed in water and clothes were perpetually moist, always damp. Each step reminded me how fragile these shelters were and how close the rain and cold came to claiming life and health for a vast population living in tents and packed sanctuaries.

Most of these people have already been displaced, many repeatedly. Homes are gone. Neighbourhoods flattened. Winter has come to Gaza, but protection from it has not. It has come without proper shelter, with no power, lacking heat.

Students in the Storm

In my role as a professor in Gaza, this weather is a heavy burden. My students are not mere statistics; they are faces I recognize; smart, persistent, but deeply weary. Most join virtual lessons from tents; others from packed rooms where privacy is impossible and connectivity intermittent. Countless learners have already experienced bereavement. Most have been rendered homeless. Yet they still try to study. Their resilience is extraordinary, but it should not be required in this way.

In Gaza, what would typically constitute routine academic practices—tasks, schedules—turn into questions of conscience, influenced daily by anxiety over students’ safety, warmth and proximity to protection.

On evenings such as this, I find myself thinking about them. Do they have dryness? Are they warm? Could the storm have shredded through their shelter as they attempted to rest? For those residing in apartments, or the shells that are left, there is a lack of heat. With electricity mostly absent and fuel scarce, warmth comes primarily through bundling up and using the few bedding items available. Despite this, cold nights are unbearable. What, then those living in tents?

The Humanitarian Shortfall

Agencies state that well over a million people in Gaza reside in temporary housing. Aid supplies, including insulated tents, have been far from enough. When the cyclone hit, relief groups reported delivering plastic sheets, tents and mattresses to numerous households. For those affected, 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. Structures give way. Chest infections, hypothermia, and infections associated with damp conditions are rising.

This cannot be described as an unforeseen disaster. Winter arrives cyclically. People in Gaza interpret this shortcoming not as bad luck, but as neglect. People speak of how necessary items are blocked or slowed, while attempts to reinforce weakened structures are consistently hampered. Local initiatives have tried to make do, to hand out tarps, yet they are still constrained by what is allowed to enter. The culpability lies in political and humanitarian. Answers are available, but are kept out.

A Symbolic Season

The factor that intensifies this hardship especially heartbreaking is how avoidable it could have been. No individual ought 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 exposes 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