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The time was around 8:30 PM on a Thursday when I made my way home in Gaza City. A strong wind was blowing, and I couldn’t stay out any longer, leaving me to walk. Initially, it was only a light drizzle, but following a brief walk the rain intensified abruptly. It came as no shock. I paused beside a tent, rubbing my palms together to generate a little heat. A young boy was sitting outside selling baked goods. We exchanged a few words as I waited, though he didn’t seem interested. I observed the cookies were poorly packaged in plastic, dampened from the drizzle, and I questioned if he’d manage to sell them all before the night ended. The cold seeped into everything.

A Journey Through a Place of Tents

As I walked along 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 falling water and the roar of the wind. Rushing forward, attempting to avoid the rain, I turned on my mobile phone's torch to illuminate the path. My thoughts kept returning to those huddled within: How are they passing the time now? What thoughts fill their minds? How do they feel? The cold was piercing. I imagined children curled under damp covers, parents shifting constantly to keep them warm.

Upon opening the door to my apartment, the icy doorknob served as a quiet but powerful reminder of the suffering faced across Gaza in these brutal winter climate. I walked into my apartment and felt consumed by the guilt of enjoying a dry home when so many were exposed to the storm.

The Darkness Intensifies

In the middle of the night, the storm reached its peak. Outside, makeshift covers on shattered windows whipped and strained, while metal sheets tore loose and fell with a clatter. Above it all came the desperate, terrified shouts of children, piercing the darkness. I felt completely helpless.

For the last fortnight, the rain has been relentless. Cold, heavy, and driven by strong winds, it has flooded makeshift homes, flooded makeshift camps and turned open ground into mud. In different contexts, this might be called “inclement weather”. In Gaza, it is endured in a state of exposure and abandonment.

The Cruelest Season

Residents refer to this time of year as al-Arba’iniya; the most bitter forty days of winter, commencing in late December and persisting to the end of January. It is the true beginning of winter, the moment when the season reveals its full force. Ordinarily, it is weathered through preparation and shelter. Currently, Gaza has none of these. The cold bites through homes, streets are deserted and people simply endure.

But the peril of the season is no longer abstract. In the early hours of Sunday before Christmas, civil defense teams 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 are still unaccounted for. These structural failures are not caused by ongoing hostilities, but the consequence of homes damaged from months of bombardment and finally undone by winter rain. Not long ago, an eight-month-old baby girl in Khan Younis succumbed to exposure to the cold.

Precarious Existence

Observing the camp nearest my home, I observed the results up close. Flimsy tarpaulins strained under the weight of water, mattresses were adrift and clothes remained wet, never fully drying. Each step highlighted 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 several times over. Homes are lost. Neighbourhoods razed. Winter has come to Gaza, but protection from it has not. It has come devoid of safe refuge, with no power, without heating.

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 faces I recognize; intelligent, determined, but profoundly exhausted. Most participate in digital sessions from tents; others from cramped quarters where privacy is impossible and connectivity unreliable. Countless learners have already experienced bereavement. Most have been rendered homeless. 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—tasks, schedules—become ethical dilemmas, influenced daily by uncertainty about students’ security, heat and ability to find refuge.

When the storm rages, I find myself thinking about them. Are they dry? Is there heat? Did the wind tear through their shelter during the night? 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 bundling up and using whatever blankets are left. Even so, cold nights are unbearable. 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 insulated tents, have been insufficient. During the recent storm, relief groups reported providing coverings, shelters and sleeping materials to thousands of families. On the ground, however, this assistance was frequently felt to be uneven and inadequate, limited to short-term fixes that were largely ineffective against ongoing suffering to cold, wind and rain. Tents collapse. Respiratory illnesses, hypothermia, and infections associated with damp conditions are increasing.

This cannot be described as an surprise calamity. Winter arrives cyclically. People in Gaza understand this failure not as bad luck, but as neglect. People speak of how critical supplies are hindered or postponed, while attempts to repair damaged homes are repeatedly obstructed. Grassroots projects have tried to find solutions, to distribute plastic sheeting, yet they are still constrained by restrictions on imports. The culpability lies in political and humanitarian. Answers are available, but are withheld.

An Unnecessary Pain

What makes this suffering especially heartbreaking is how preventable it is. It is unconscionable to study, raise children, or combat disease standing knee-high in cold water inside a tent. No student should fear the rain ruining their last notebook. Rain lays bare just how precarious existence is. It strains physiques worn down by stress, exhaustion, and grief.

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