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The clock read around 8:30 PM on a weekday evening when I made my way home in Gaza City. Gusts of wind blew, forcing me inside any longer, so walking was my only option. In the beginning, it was merely a soft rain, but following a brief walk the rain suddenly grew heavier. It came as no shock. I took shelter by a tent, trying to warm my hands to fight off the chill. A young boy sat nearby selling sweet treats. We exchanged a few words while I stood there, but his attention was elsewhere. I observed the cookies were loosely wrapped in plastic, moist from the drizzle, and I questioned if he’d find buyers before the night ended. A deep chill permeated the air.

A Walk Through a Landscape of Tents

While traversing al-Wehda Street in Gaza City, canvas structures flanked both sides of the road. An eerie silence replaced voices from inside them, merely the din of torrential rain and the whistle of the wind. Rushing forward, trying to dodge the rain, I switched on my mobile phone's torch to illuminate the path. My thoughts kept returning to those sheltering inside: What occupies them now? What is their state of mind? How do they feel? A severe chill gripped the air. I imagined children nestled under wet blankets, parents adjusting repeatedly to keep them warm.

When I opened the door to my apartment, the icy doorknob served as a subtle yet haunting reminder of the hardships endured across Gaza in these severe cold season. I entered my apartment and felt consumed by the guilt of enjoying a dry home when countless others faced exposure to the storm.

The Midnight Hour Intensifies

As midnight passed, the storm intensified. Outside, makeshift covers on shattered windows sagged and flapped violently, while corrugated metal broke away and fell with a clatter. Above it all came the sharp, panicked screams of children, shattering the darkness. I felt totally incapable.

For the last fortnight, the rain has been incessant. Chilly, dense, and propelled by strong winds, it has drenched shelters, flooded makeshift camps and turned bare earth into mud. Elsewhere, this might be called “bad weather”. In Gaza, it is lived with exposure and abandonment.

The Cruelest Season

Palestinians know 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 shows its true power. Normally, it is weathered through preparation and shelter. Now, Gaza has no such defenses. The cold bites through homes, streets are vacant and people simply endure.

But the threat posed by the cold is now very real. In the early hours of Sunday before Christmas, civil defense teams found the victims 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 are still unaccounted for. These structural failures are not caused by ongoing hostilities, but the outcome of homes weakened by months of bombardment and ultimately defeated by winter rain. In recent days, an infant in Khan Younis passed away from exposure to the cold.

Fragile Shelters

Walking past the camp nearest my home, I witnessed the impact up close. Thin plastic sheets buckled beneath the weight of water, mattresses bobbed in water and clothes hung damply, incapable of drying. Each step reinforced how precarious these dwellings are and how close the rain and cold came to claiming life and health for hundreds of thousands living in tents and cramped refuges.

The majority of these individuals have already been uprooted, many on multiple occasions. Homes are gone. Neighbourhoods flattened. Winter has arrived in Gaza, but defense against it has not. It has come without proper shelter, in darkness, devoid of warmth.

A Teacher's Anguish

In my role as a professor in Gaza, this weather causes deep concern. My students are not distant names; they are faces I recognize; bright, resilient, but extremely fatigued. Most participate in digital sessions from tents; others from cramped quarters where solitude is unattainable and connectivity intermittent. Countless learners have already suffered personal loss. Most have been rendered homeless. Yet they still try to study. Their fortitude is remarkable, but it ought not be necessary in this way.

In Gaza, what would usually be routine academic practices—projects, due dates—transform into questions of conscience, shaped each day by uncertainty about students’ security, heat and access to shelter.

On evenings such as this, I cannot help but wonder about them. Is their shelter holding? Is there heat? Did the wind tear through their shelter as they attempted to rest? For those residing in apartments, or what remains of them, there is no heating. With electricity scarce and fuel scarce, warmth comes primarily through donning extra clothing and using whatever blankets are left. Even so, cold nights are excruciating. How then those living in tents?

Political Failure

Reports indicate that more than a million people in Gaza reside in temporary housing. Relief items, including insulated tents, have been far from enough. During the recent storm, relief groups reported distributing tarpaulins, tents and bedding to a multitude of people. In reality, however, this assistance was often perceived as patchy and insufficient, limited to temporary solutions that did little against ongoing suffering to cold, wind and rain. Shelters fail. Sicknesses, hypothermia, and infections caused by damp conditions are increasing.

This is not an unforeseen disaster. Winter comes every year. People in Gaza interpret this shortcoming not as fate, but as being forsaken. People speak of how critical supplies are blocked or slowed, while attempts to repair damaged homes are frequently blocked. Grassroots projects have tried to improvise, to distribute plastic sheeting, yet they remain limited by what is allowed to enter. The failure is political and humanitarian. Remedies are known, but are kept out.

A Preventable Suffering

What makes this suffering 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. It is wrong for a pupil to worry about the rain damaging their precious phone. Rain reveals just how precarious existence is. It tests bodies worn down by anxiety, fatigue, and loss.

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