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The time was about 8:30 PM on a weekday evening when I headed back home in Gaza City. The wind howled, forcing me inside 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 paused beside a tent, rubbing my palms together to draw some warmth. A young boy had positioned himself selling baked goods. We shared brief remarks while I stood there, though he didn’t seem interested. I saw the cookies were loosely wrapped in plastic, already soggy from the drizzle, and I questioned if he’d find buyers before the night ended. The cold seeped into everything.

A Journey Through a City of Tents

While traversing al-Wehda Street in Gaza City, canvas structures flanked both sides of the road. There were no voices from inside them, only the sound of falling water and the whistle of the wind. Quickening my pace, trying to dodge the rain, I switched on my mobile phone's torch to illuminate the path. My mind continually drifted to those huddled within: What occupies them now? What are they thinking? What are they experiencing? The cold was piercing. I envisioned children huddled under damp covers, parents moving restlessly to keep them warm.

When I opened the door to my apartment, the freezing handle served as a understated yet stark reminder of the suffering faced across Gaza in these brutal winter climate. I stepped inside my apartment and couldn't shake the guilt of having a roof when a multitude remained unprotected to the storm.

The Midnight Hour Escalates

As midnight passed, the storm intensified. Outside, plastic sheeting on broken panes billowed and tore, while corrugated metal broke away and slammed down. Cutting through the chaos came the piercing, fearful cries of children, piercing the darkness. I felt totally incapable.

For the last fortnight, the rain has been relentless. Cold, heavy, and driven by strong winds, it has drenched shelters, inundated temporary settlements and turned bare earth into mud. Elsewhere, this might be called “inclement weather”. In Gaza, it is lived with exposure and abandonment.

The Harshest Days

Palestinians know this time of year as al-Arba’iniya; the most bitter forty days of winter, commencing in late December and lasting until the end of January. It is the real onset of winter, the moment when the season unleashes its intensity. Ordinarily, it is faced with preparation and shelter. Now, Gaza has no such defenses. The cold bites through homes, streets are empty and people just persevere.

But the peril of the season is no longer abstract. 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, saving five more people, including a child and two women. Two people have not been found. These incidents are not the result of fresh strikes, but the consequence of homes damaged from months of bombardment and ultimately defeated by winter rain. Not long ago, a young child in Khan Younis succumbed to exposure to the cold.

Precarious Existence

Walking past the camp nearest my home, I observed the results up close. Thin plastic sheets strained under the weight of water, mattresses were adrift and clothes were perpetually moist, always damp. Each step highlighted how vulnerable these tents are and how close the rain and cold came to claiming life and health for hundreds of thousands living in tents and cramped refuges.

A great number of these residents have already been displaced, many repeatedly. Homes are destroyed. Neighbourhoods razed. Winter has descended upon Gaza, but defense against it has not. It has come devoid of safe refuge, in darkness, devoid of warmth.

The Weight on Education

As a university lecturer in Gaza, this weather is a heavy burden. My students are not mere statistics; they are individuals I know; smart, persistent, but profoundly exhausted. Most join virtual lessons from tents; others from packed rooms where privacy is impossible and connectivity intermittent. A significant number of pupils have already suffered personal loss. Most have lost their homes. Yet they still try to study. Their fortitude is remarkable, but it ought not be necessary in this way.

In Gaza, what would normally count as routine academic practices—assignments, deadlines—turn into moral negotiations, influenced daily by concern for students’ security, heat and access to shelter.

When the storm rages, I am constantly preoccupied about them. Is their shelter holding? Do they feel any warmth? Did the wind tear through their shelter while they were trying to sleep? For those still living in apartments, or what remains of them, there is no heating. With electricity scarce and fuel scarce, warmth comes mainly from wearing multiple layers and using any remaining covers. Even so, cold nights are intolerable. How then those living in tents?

Aid and Abandonment

Agencies state that more than a million people in Gaza reside in temporary housing. Aid supplies, including thermal blankets, have been inadequate. Amid the last tempest, humanitarian partners reported delivering plastic sheets, tents and mattresses to a multitude of people. 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. Chest infections, hypothermia, and infections associated with damp conditions are rising.

This goes beyond an unforeseen disaster. Winter comes every year. People in Gaza understand this failure not as bad luck, but as neglect. People speak of how essential materials are hindered or postponed, while attempts to reinforce weakened structures are repeatedly obstructed. Grassroots projects have tried to make do, to hand out tarps, yet they remain limited by what is allowed to enter. The root cause is political and humanitarian. Solutions exist, but are kept out.

An Unnecessary Pain

The factor that intensifies this hardship especially agonizing is how avoidable it could have been. No individual ought to study, raise children, or battle sickness standing surrounded by cold water inside a tent. It is wrong for a pupil to worry about the rain damaging their precious phone. Rain exposes just how vulnerable survival is. It challenges health worn down by stress, exhaustion, and grief.

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