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The time was approximately 8:30 PM on a Thursday when I returned home in Gaza City. The wind howled, and I couldn’t stay out any longer, leaving me to walk. Initially, it was only a light drizzle, but after about 200 metres the rain suddenly grew heavier. That wasn’t surprising. I took shelter by a tent, trying to warm my hands to draw some warmth. A young boy was sitting outside selling baked goods. We shared brief remarks during my pause, but his attention was elsewhere. I noticed the cookies were hastily covered in plastic, already soggy from the drizzle, and I questioned if he’d have enough to sell before the night ended. A deep chill permeated the air.

A Trek Through a Landscape of Tents

While traversing al-Wehda Street in Gaza City, makeshift shelters crowded both sides of the road. No sounds of conversation came from inside them, merely the din of torrential rain and the roar of the wind. As I hurried on, attempting to avoid the rain, I activated my mobile phone's torch to illuminate the path. My mind continually drifted to those taking refuge within: How are they passing the time now? What are they thinking? How do they feel? A severe chill gripped the air. I pictured children curled under soaked bedding, parents adjusting repeatedly to keep them warm.

Upon opening the door to my apartment, the cold metal served as a subtle yet haunting reminder of the struggles borne across Gaza in these severe cold season. I walked into my apartment and was overwhelmed by the guilt of having a roof when a multitude remained unprotected to the storm.

The Night Escalates

As midnight passed, the storm intensified. Outside, plastic sheeting on shattered windows whipped and strained, while metal sheets broke away and fell with a clatter. Overriding the noise came the piercing, fearful cries of children, piercing the darkness. I felt totally incapable.

Over the past two weeks, the rain has been incessant. Chilly, dense, and propelled by strong winds, it has flooded makeshift homes, swamped refugee areas and turned the soil into mud. In different contexts, 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 fourty most severe days of winter, starting from late December and lasting until the end of January. It is the true beginning of winter, the moment when the season shows its true power. Ordinarily, it is endured with preparation and shelter. Now, Gaza has neither. The chill penetrates through homes, streets are vacant and people just persevere.

But the threat posed by the cold is now very real. On the Sunday morning before Christmas, rescue operations found the victims of two children after the roof of a bombarded structure collapsed in northern Gaza, rescuing five others, including a child and two women. Two people are still unaccounted for. These structural failures are not the result of fresh strikes, but the consequence of homes damaged from months of bombardment and finally undone by winter rain. In recent days, an infant in Khan Younis succumbed to exposure to the cold.

Precarious Existence

Walking past the camp nearest my home, I observed the results up close. Flimsy tarpaulins buckled beneath the weight of water, mattresses were adrift and clothes remained wet, incapable of drying. Each step highlighted how fragile these shelters were and how close the rain and cold came to taking life and health for a vast population living in tents and cramped refuges.

The majority of these individuals have already been uprooted, many on multiple occasions. Homes are lost. Neighbourhoods razed. Winter has arrived in Gaza, but protection from it has not. It has come without proper shelter, in darkness, without heating.

The Weight on Education

As a university lecturer in Gaza, this weather weighs heavily on me. My students are not distant names; they are faces I recognize; smart, persistent, but profoundly exhausted. Most attend online classes from tents; others from cramped quarters where privacy is impossible and connectivity intermittent. A significant number of pupils have already lost family members. Most have lost their homes. Yet they continue their education. Their fortitude is remarkable, but it should not be required in this way.

In Gaza, what would typically constitute routine academic practices—projects, due dates—turn into questions of conscience, dictated every moment by anxiety over students’ well-being, comfort and proximity to protection.

During nights like these, I am constantly preoccupied about them. Is their shelter holding? Is there heat? Has the gale ripped through their shelter as they attempted to rest? For those remaining in apartments, or the shells that are left, there is an absence of warmth. With electricity mostly absent and fuel scarce, warmth comes primarily through donning extra clothing and using any remaining covers. Nonetheless, cold nights are intolerable. What, then those living in tents?

Political Failure

Reports indicate that more than a million people in Gaza exist in makeshift accommodations. Relief items, including thermal blankets, have been inadequate. When the cyclone hit, humanitarian partners reported providing plastic sheets, tents and mattresses to numerous households. In reality, however, this assistance was often perceived as patchy and insufficient, limited to short-term fixes that did little against extended hardship to cold, wind and rain. Tents collapse. Respiratory illnesses, hypothermia, and infections associated with damp conditions are rising.

This goes beyond an surprise calamity. Winter comes every year. People in Gaza interpret this shortcoming not as fate, but as abandonment. People speak of how necessary items are restricted or delayed, while attempts to fix broken houses are consistently hampered. Community efforts have tried to find solutions, to provide coverings, 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

The aspect that renders this pain especially heartbreaking is how preventable it is. It is unconscionable to study, raise children, or combat disease standing ankle-deep in cold water inside a tent. No student should fear the rain destroying their final textbook. Rain exposes just how fragile life has become. It strains physiques worn down by pressure, weariness, and sorrow.

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