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The clock read around 8:30 PM on a Thursday when I headed back home in Gaza City. A strong wind was blowing, and I couldn’t stay out any longer, so walking was my only option. Initially, it was just a gentle sprinkle, but a short distance later the rain suddenly grew heavier. That wasn’t surprising. I took shelter by a tent, clapping my hands to fight off the chill. A young boy had positioned himself selling baked goods. We exchanged a few words as I waited, although he appeared disengaged. I noticed the cookies were loosely wrapped in plastic, dampened from the drizzle, and I wondered if he’d have enough to sell 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, makeshift shelters crowded both sides of the road. An eerie silence replaced voices from inside them, just the noise of rain pouring down and the moan of the wind. Quickening my pace, attempting to avoid the rain, I turned on my mobile phone's torch to see the road ahead. My thoughts kept returning to those huddled within: What are they doing now? What are they thinking? What are they experiencing? It was bitterly cold. I envisioned children curled under damp covers, parents moving restlessly to keep them warm.

When I opened the door to my apartment, the icy doorknob served as a quiet but powerful reminder of the hardships endured across Gaza in these brutal winter climate. I stepped inside my apartment and was overwhelmed by the guilt of having a roof when a multitude remained unprotected to the storm.

The Night Worsens

During the darkest hours, the storm grew stronger. Outside, tarps on shattered windows billowed and tore, while metal sheets tore loose and slammed down. Cutting through the chaos came the sharp, panicked screams of children, shattering the darkness. I felt totally incapable.

Over the past two weeks, the rain has been relentless. Chilly, dense, and propelled by strong winds, it has soaked tents, swamped refugee areas and turned the soil into mud. In different contexts, this might be called “bad weather”. 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, starting from 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 no such defenses. The frost seeps through homes, streets are deserted and people just persevere.

But the threat posed by the cold is no longer abstract. Early on the Sunday before Christmas, civil defense teams retrieved the remains of two children after the roof of a shelled home collapsed in northern Gaza, rescuing five others, including a child and two women. Two people remain missing. These structural failures are not new attacks, but the consequence of homes compromised after months of bombardment and ultimately defeated by winter rain. In recent days, a young child in Khan Younis passed away from exposure to the cold.

A Life in Tents

Observing the camp nearest my home, I saw the consequences up close. Flimsy tarpaulins buckled beneath the weight of water, mattresses were adrift and clothes remained wet, incapable of drying. Each step reminded me how fragile these shelters were and how close the rain and cold came to taking 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 shelter from its fury has not. It has come without proper shelter, in darkness, without heating.

A Teacher's Anguish

As a university lecturer in Gaza, this weather is a heavy burden. 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 personal space doesn't exist and connectivity unreliable. A significant number of pupils have already lost family members. Most have lost their homes. Yet they still try to study. Their resilience is extraordinary, but it should not be required in this way.

In Gaza, what would typically constitute routine academic practices—tasks, schedules—turn into moral negotiations, shaped each day by uncertainty about students’ security, heat and proximity to protection.

When the storm rages, I cannot help but wonder about them. Do they have dryness? Do they feel any warmth? Did the wind tear through their shelter during the night? For those residing in apartments, or damaged structures, there is an absence of warmth. With electricity mostly absent and fuel rare, warmth comes mostly via donning extra clothing and using whatever blankets are left. 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. Aid supplies, including thermal blankets, have been insufficient. Amid the last tempest, aid organizations reported providing coverings, shelters and sleeping materials to thousands of families. In reality, however, this assistance was often perceived as inconsistent and lacking, limited to band-aid measures that offered scant protection against ongoing suffering to cold, wind and rain. Structures give way. Sicknesses, hypothermia, and infections caused by damp conditions are rising.

This goes beyond an unexpected catastrophe. Winter comes every year. People in Gaza interpret this shortcoming not as fate, but as being forsaken. People speak of how necessary items are hindered or postponed, while attempts to reinforce weakened structures are frequently blocked. Local initiatives have tried to improvise, to distribute plastic sheeting, yet they are still constrained by bureaucratic barriers. The root cause is political and humanitarian. Answers are available, but are kept out.

A Preventable Suffering

What makes this suffering especially agonizing is how avoidable it could have been. No individual ought to study, raise children, or fight illness 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 precarious existence is. It tests bodies worn down by stress, exhaustion, and grief.

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