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It was approximately 8:30 PM on a weekday evening when I made my way home in Gaza City. Gusts of wind blew, and I couldn’t stay out any longer, so I had to walk. In the beginning, it was only a light drizzle, but a short distance later the rain intensified abruptly. This was expected. I took shelter by a tent, clapping my hands to fight off the chill. A young boy was sitting outside selling homemade cookies. We shared brief remarks while I stood there, although he appeared disengaged. I noticed the cookies were poorly packaged in plastic, dampened from the drizzle, and I pondered if he’d find buyers before the night ended. The freezing temperature invaded every space.

A Walk Through a Landscape of Tents

While traversing al-Wehda Street in Gaza City, tents lined both sides of the road. An eerie silence replaced voices from inside them, just the noise of falling water and the whistle of the wind. Rushing forward, attempting to avoid the rain, I switched on my mobile phone's torch to illuminate the path. My thoughts kept returning to those taking refuge within: What are they doing now? What is their state of mind? What emotions do they hold? It was bitterly cold. I imagined children nestled under wet blankets, parents adjusting repeatedly to keep them warm.

As I unlocked the door to my apartment, the icy doorknob served as a understated yet stark reminder of the hardships endured across Gaza in these brutal winter climate. I entered my apartment and felt consumed by the guilt of having a roof when a multitude remained unprotected to the storm.

The Darkness Worsens

As midnight passed, the storm grew stronger. Outside, plastic sheeting on broken panes whipped and strained, while metal sheets broke away and crashed to the ground. Above it all came the piercing, fearful cries of children, piercing the darkness. I felt utterly powerless.

During recent days, the rain has been incessant. Cold, heavy, and driven by strong winds, it has soaked tents, flooded makeshift camps and turned the soil into mud. In other places, this might be called “poor conditions”. In Gaza, it is experienced amidst exposure and abandonment.

Al-Arba’iniya

Residents refer to 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 definite start of winter, the moment when the season shows its true power. Ordinarily, 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 threat posed by the cold is now very real. On the Sunday morning 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 are still unaccounted for. These structural failures are not the result of fresh strikes, but the result of homes weakened by months of bombardment and finally undone by winter rain. In recent days, an infant in Khan Younis died of exposure to the cold.

Fragile Shelters

Walking past the camp nearest my home, I saw the consequences up close. Flimsy tarpaulins buckled beneath the weight of water, mattresses bobbed in water and clothes hung damply, never fully drying. Each step reminded me how precarious these dwellings are and how close the rain and cold came to taking life and health for countless individuals living in tents and cramped refuges.

A great number of these residents have already been uprooted, many on multiple occasions. Homes are lost. Neighbourhoods razed. Winter has come to Gaza, but protection from it has not. It has come devoid of safe refuge, with no power, lacking heat.

The Weight on Education

In my role as a professor 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 overcrowded shelters where privacy is impossible and connectivity unreliable. A significant number of pupils have already suffered personal loss. Most have lost their homes. Yet they continue their education. Their resilience is extraordinary, but it should not be required in this way.

In Gaza, what would typically constitute routine academic practices—projects, due dates—become questions of conscience, dictated every moment by uncertainty about students’ security, heat and access to shelter.

On evenings such as this, I am constantly preoccupied about them. Are they dry? Are they warm? Has the gale ripped through their shelter during the night? For those remaining in apartments, or the shells that are left, there is a lack of heat. With electricity largely unavailable and fuel in short supply, warmth comes mostly via wearing multiple layers and using the few bedding items available. Even so, cold nights are excruciating. What, then those living in tents?

Political Failure

Agencies state that well over a million people in Gaza exist in makeshift accommodations. Humanitarian assistance, including weatherproof shelters, have been inadequate. Amid the last tempest, humanitarian partners reported providing plastic sheets, tents and mattresses to a multitude of people. In reality, however, this assistance was often perceived as uneven and inadequate, limited to temporary solutions that were largely ineffective against ongoing suffering to cold, wind and rain. Shelters fail. Chest infections, hypothermia, and infections associated with damp conditions are increasing.

This cannot be described as an unforeseen disaster. Winter is an annual event. People in Gaza view this crisis not as fate, but as abandonment. People speak of how critical supplies are restricted or delayed, while attempts to reinforce weakened structures are repeatedly obstructed. Grassroots projects have tried to make do, to distribute plastic sheeting, yet they are still constrained by what is allowed to enter. The root cause is political and humanitarian. Answers are available, but are kept out.

An Unnecessary Pain

What makes this suffering especially painful is how preventable it is. No individual ought to study, raise children, or battle sickness standing ankle-deep in cold water inside a tent. No student should fear the rain damaging their precious phone. Rain lays bare just how precarious existence is. It tests bodies worn down by stress, exhaustion, and grief.

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