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The clock read about 8:30 PM on a Thursday when I made my way home in Gaza City. The wind howled, forcing me inside any longer, so walking was my only option. In the beginning, it was only a light drizzle, but after about 200 metres the rain intensified abruptly. That wasn’t surprising. I paused beside a tent, clapping my hands to generate a little heat. A young boy had positioned himself selling baked goods. We shared brief remarks while I stood there, but his attention was elsewhere. I noticed the cookies were poorly packaged in plastic, dampened from the drizzle, and I pondered if he’d find buyers before the night ended. A deep chill permeated the air.

A Trek Through a City of Tents

Walking down al-Wehda Street in Gaza City, canvas structures flanked both sides of the road. No sounds of conversation came from inside them, merely the din 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 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 pictured children curled under wet blankets, parents adjusting repeatedly to keep them warm.

When I opened the door to my apartment, the freezing handle served as a quiet but powerful reminder of the hardships endured across Gaza in these brutal winter climate. I walked into my apartment and was overwhelmed by the guilt of having a roof when so many were exposed to the storm.

The Night Intensifies

In the middle of the night, the storm intensified. Outside, plastic sheeting on damaged glass billowed and tore, while tin roofing broke away and slammed down. Overriding the noise came the piercing, fearful cries of children, cutting through the darkness. I felt totally incapable.

Over the past two weeks, the rain has been incessant. Cold, heavy, and driven by strong winds, it has flooded makeshift homes, flooded makeshift camps and turned the soil into mud. In other places, this might be called “poor conditions”. 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 40 coldest and harshest days of winter, beginning in 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 neither. The frost seeps through homes, streets are vacant and people merely survive.

But the danger of winter is no longer abstract. On the Sunday morning before Christmas, rescue operations retrieved the remains of two children after the roof of a shelled home collapsed in northern Gaza, saving five more people, including a child and two women. Two people remain missing. Such collapses are not the result of fresh strikes, but the consequence of homes weakened by months of bombardment and succumbing to winter rain. In recent days, an infant in Khan Younis succumbed to exposure to the cold.

Precarious Existence

Observing the camp nearest my home, I witnessed the impact up close. Flimsy tarpaulins buckled beneath the weight of water, mattresses were adrift and clothes were perpetually moist, always damp. Each step highlighted how fragile these shelters were and how close the rain and cold threatened life and health for hundreds of thousands living in tents and overcrowded shelters.

A great number of these residents have already been uprooted, many on multiple occasions. Homes are gone. Neighbourhoods flattened. Winter has descended upon Gaza, but shelter from its fury has not. It has come devoid of safe refuge, with no power, lacking heat.

Students in the Storm

As a university lecturer in Gaza, this weather weighs heavily on me. My students are not figures in a report; they are young people I speak to; intelligent, determined, but deeply weary. Most attend online classes from tents; others from cramped quarters where personal space doesn't exist and connectivity intermittent. A significant number of pupils have already suffered personal loss. Most have seen their houses destroyed. Yet they persist in learning. Their perseverance is astounding, but it ought not be necessary in this way.

In Gaza, what would usually be routine academic practices—projects, due dates—become moral negotiations, influenced daily by anxiety over students’ safety, warmth and proximity to protection.

On evenings such as this, I am constantly preoccupied about them. Is their shelter holding? Are they warm? Has the gale ripped through their shelter during the night? For those remaining in apartments, or the shells that are left, there is an absence of warmth. With electricity mostly absent and fuel rare, warmth comes mostly via wearing multiple layers and using any remaining covers. Nonetheless, cold nights are intolerable. What, then those living in tents?

Aid and Abandonment

Figures show that more than a million people in Gaza exist in makeshift accommodations. Humanitarian assistance, including thermal blankets, have been insufficient. Amid the last tempest, relief groups reported distributing plastic sheets, tents and mattresses to numerous households. For those affected, however, this assistance was widely experienced as patchy and insufficient, limited to band-aid measures that offered scant protection against ongoing suffering to cold, wind and rain. Tents collapse. Respiratory illnesses, hypothermia, and infections linked to damp conditions are on the upswing.

This is not an unexpected catastrophe. Winter comes every year. People in Gaza interpret this shortcoming not as fate, but as abandonment. People speak of how essential materials are blocked or slowed, while attempts to reinforce weakened structures are repeatedly obstructed. Grassroots projects have tried to improvise, to hand out tarps, yet they continue to be hampered by what is allowed to enter. The root cause is political and humanitarian. Solutions exist, but are prevented from arriving.

An Unnecessary Pain

What makes this suffering especially agonizing is how preventable it is. No individual ought 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 ruining their last notebook. Rain exposes just how vulnerable survival is. It tests bodies worn down by anxiety, fatigue, and loss.

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