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It was approximately 8:30 PM on a weekday evening when I returned home in Gaza City. A strong wind was blowing, and I couldn’t stay out any longer, so I had to walk. In the beginning, it was only a light drizzle, but following a brief walk the rain suddenly grew heavier. This was expected. I paused beside a tent, rubbing my palms together to generate a little heat. A young boy was sitting outside selling homemade cookies. We spoke briefly while I stood there, but his attention was elsewhere. I observed the cookies were poorly packaged in plastic, dampened from the drizzle, and I pondered if he’d find buyers before the night ended. The cold seeped into everything.

A Walk Through a City of Tents

While traversing al-Wehda Street in Gaza City, canvas structures flanked both sides of the road. No sounds of conversation came from inside them, just the noise of torrential rain and the moan of the wind. Rushing forward, trying to dodge the rain, I activated my mobile phone's torch to see the road ahead. I couldn't stop thinking to those taking refuge within: How are they passing the time now? What are they thinking? How do they feel? It was bitterly cold. I imagined children curled under damp covers, parents adjusting repeatedly to keep them warm.

As I unlocked the door to my apartment, the cold metal served as a understated yet stark reminder of the hardships endured across Gaza in these brutal winter climate. I entered my apartment and was overwhelmed 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 grew stronger. Outside, plastic sheeting on shattered windows sagged and flapped violently, while tin roofing broke away and fell with a clatter. Above it all came the piercing, fearful cries of children, piercing the darkness. I felt completely helpless.

During recent days, the rain has been relentless. Freezing, pouring, and carried by strong winds, it has flooded makeshift homes, swamped refugee areas and turned open ground into mud. In different contexts, this might be called “poor conditions”. In Gaza, it is experienced amidst 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 persisting to the end of January. It is the real onset of winter, the moment when the season unleashes its intensity. Typically, it is faced with preparation and shelter. This year, Gaza has none of these. The frost seeps through homes, streets are vacant and people merely survive.

But the peril of the season is no longer abstract. Early on the Sunday before Christmas, civil defense teams retrieved the remains of two children after the roof of a war-damaged building collapsed in northern Gaza, freeing five additional individuals, including a child and two women. Two people remain missing. Such collapses are not caused by ongoing hostilities, but the consequence of homes weakened by months of bombardment and ultimately defeated by winter rain. Not long ago, an eight-month-old baby girl in Khan Younis passed away from exposure to the cold.

Fragile Shelters

Walking past the camp nearest my home, I observed the results up close. Thin plastic sheets buckled beneath the weight of water, mattresses were adrift and clothes hung damply, incapable of drying. Each step highlighted how vulnerable these tents are and how close the rain and cold threatened life and health for countless individuals living in tents and cramped refuges.

A great number of these residents have already been uprooted, many several times over. Homes are destroyed. Neighbourhoods razed. Winter has come to Gaza, but protection from it has not. It has come lacking adequate housing, with no power, without heating.

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 individuals I know; bright, resilient, but deeply weary. Most participate in digital sessions from tents; others from overcrowded shelters where solitude is unattainable and connectivity sporadic. Many of my students have already experienced bereavement. Most have seen their houses destroyed. Yet they persist in learning. Their perseverance is astounding, but it must not be demanded in this way.

In Gaza, what would typically constitute routine academic practices—projects, due dates—turn into ethical dilemmas, dictated every moment by uncertainty about students’ security, heat and proximity to protection.

On evenings such as this, I cannot help but wonder about them. Do they have dryness? 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 an absence of warmth. With electricity scarce and fuel rare, warmth comes mainly from donning extra clothing and using any remaining covers. Nonetheless, cold nights are intolerable. What, then those living in tents?

Aid and Abandonment

Reports indicate that well over a million people in Gaza reside in temporary housing. Relief items, including insulated tents, have been far from enough. Amid the last tempest, aid organizations reported providing tarpaulins, tents and bedding to a multitude of people. In reality, however, this assistance was widely experienced as uneven and inadequate, limited to temporary solutions that were largely ineffective against prolonged exposure to cold, wind and rain. Shelters fail. Respiratory illnesses, hypothermia, and infections caused by damp conditions are rising.

This goes beyond an unforeseen disaster. Winter arrives cyclically. People in Gaza understand this failure not as fate, but as abandonment. People speak of how necessary items are hindered or postponed, while attempts to reinforce weakened structures are repeatedly obstructed. Community efforts have tried to find solutions, to distribute plastic sheeting, yet they are still constrained by what is allowed to enter. The root cause is political and humanitarian. Remedies are known, but are prevented from arriving.

A Preventable Suffering

The aspect that renders this pain especially heartbreaking 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. No learner should dread the rain damaging their precious phone. Rain reveals just how precarious existence is. It strains physiques worn down by anxiety, fatigue, and loss.

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