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It was about 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 I had to walk. In the beginning, it was only a light drizzle, but a short distance later the rain suddenly grew heavier. That wasn’t surprising. I stopped near a tent, rubbing my palms together to fight off the chill. A young boy had positioned himself selling sweet treats. We shared brief remarks while I stood there, but his attention was elsewhere. I observed the cookies were hastily covered in plastic, moist from the drizzle, and I questioned if he’d manage to sell them all before the night ended. The cold seeped into everything.

A Journey Through a Place 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, just the noise of torrential rain and the roar of the wind. Rushing forward, trying to dodge the rain, I turned 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 thoughts fill their minds? What emotions do they hold? The cold was piercing. I pictured children curled under soaked bedding, parents adjusting repeatedly to keep them warm.

When I opened the door to my apartment, the cold metal served as a quiet but powerful reminder of the suffering faced across Gaza in these severe cold season. I walked into my apartment and couldn't shake the guilt of possessing shelter when so many were exposed to the storm.

The Night Intensifies

As midnight passed, the storm grew stronger. Outside, plastic sheeting on shattered windows billowed and tore, while tin roofing ripped free and slammed down. Cutting through the chaos came the sharp, panicked screams of children, piercing the darkness. I felt totally incapable.

For the last fortnight, the rain has been unending. Freezing, pouring, and carried by strong winds, it has soaked tents, inundated temporary settlements and turned open ground into mud. In other places, this might be called “bad 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, starting from late December and persisting to the end of January. It is the true beginning of winter, the moment when the season reveals its full force. Ordinarily, it is faced with preparation and shelter. Now, Gaza has neither. The chill penetrates through homes, streets are empty and people simply endure.

But the peril of the season is far from theoretical. On the Sunday morning before Christmas, civil defense teams recovered the bodies of two children after the roof of a war-damaged building collapsed in northern Gaza, saving five more people, including a child and two women. Two people remain missing. These structural failures are not the result of fresh strikes, but the outcome of homes damaged from months of bombardment and finally undone by winter rain. Not long ago, an infant in Khan Younis passed away from exposure to the cold.

A Life in Tents

Observing the camp nearest my home, I witnessed the impact up close. Inadequate coverings sagged 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 taking life and health for a vast population living in tents and cramped refuges.

The majority of these individuals have already been forced from their homes, many on multiple occasions. Homes are destroyed. Neighbourhoods flattened. Winter has come to Gaza, but shelter from its fury has not. It has come without proper shelter, 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 young people I speak to; smart, persistent, but profoundly exhausted. Most join virtual lessons from tents; others from packed rooms where privacy is impossible and connectivity sporadic. A significant number of pupils have already suffered personal loss. Most have been rendered homeless. Yet they persist in learning. Their fortitude is remarkable, but it should not be required in this way.

In Gaza, what would usually be routine academic practices—projects, due dates—turn into questions of conscience, dictated every moment by uncertainty about students’ security, heat and proximity to protection.

During nights like these, I am constantly preoccupied about them. Do they have dryness? Do they feel any warmth? Has the gale ripped through their shelter while they were trying to sleep? For those remaining in apartments, or damaged structures, there is a lack of heat. With electricity mostly absent and fuel scarce, warmth comes primarily through wearing multiple layers and using whatever blankets are left. Nonetheless, cold nights are unbearable. What, then those living in tents?

Political Failure

Agencies state that well over a million people in Gaza exist in makeshift accommodations. Aid supplies, including insulated tents, have been insufficient. During the recent storm, humanitarian partners reported distributing coverings, shelters and sleeping materials to a multitude of people. On the ground, however, this assistance was often perceived as patchy and insufficient, limited to short-term fixes that were largely ineffective against prolonged exposure to cold, wind and rain. Tents collapse. Sicknesses, hypothermia, and infections associated with damp conditions are on the upswing.

This is not an surprise calamity. Winter is an annual event. People in Gaza understand this failure not as misfortune, but as abandonment. People speak of how necessary items are hindered or postponed, while attempts to repair damaged homes are frequently blocked. Community efforts have tried to find solutions, to hand out tarps, yet they remain limited by restrictions on imports. The root cause is political and humanitarian. Remedies are known, but are kept out.

An Unnecessary Pain

The factor that intensifies this hardship especially agonizing is how unnecessary it should be. No individual ought to study, raise children, or combat disease standing knee-high in cold water inside a tent. It is wrong for a pupil to worry about the rain destroying their final textbook. Rain reveals just how precarious existence is. It strains physiques worn down by anxiety, fatigue, and loss.

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