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It was around 8:30 PM on a Thursday when I headed back home in Gaza City. The wind howled, 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 intensified abruptly. This was expected. I stopped near a tent, rubbing my palms together to generate a little heat. A young boy sat nearby selling homemade cookies. We shared brief remarks while I stood there, though he didn’t seem interested. I saw the cookies were hastily covered in plastic, already soggy from the drizzle, and I pondered if he’d manage to sell them all before the night ended. The cold seeped into everything.

A Trek Through a Place of Tents

As I walked along 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 rain pouring down and the moan of the wind. As I hurried on, trying to dodge the rain, I switched on my mobile phone's torch to light my way. My thoughts kept returning to those huddled within: What occupies them now? What are they thinking? What emotions do they hold? It was bitterly cold. I imagined children curled under damp covers, parents adjusting repeatedly to keep them warm.

Upon opening the door to my apartment, the freezing handle served as a subtle yet haunting reminder of the suffering faced across Gaza in these brutal winter climate. I walked into my apartment and felt consumed by the guilt of possessing shelter when a multitude remained unprotected to the storm.

The Midnight Hour Escalates

During the darkest hours, the storm intensified. Outside, tarps on broken panes sagged and flapped violently, while corrugated metal broke away and crashed to the ground. Above it all came the piercing, fearful cries of children, shattering the darkness. I felt utterly powerless.

Over the past two weeks, the rain has been unending. Freezing, pouring, and carried by strong winds, it has flooded makeshift homes, flooded makeshift camps and turned bare earth into mud. Elsewhere, this might be called “poor conditions”. In Gaza, it is lived with exposure and abandonment.

The Cruelest Season

Palestinians know this time of year as al-Arba’iniya; the most bitter forty days of winter, beginning in late December and continuing through the end of January. It is the true beginning of winter, the moment when the season reveals its full force. Ordinarily, it is weathered through preparation and shelter. Now, Gaza has no such defenses. The cold bites through homes, streets are deserted and people simply endure.

But the danger of winter is now very real. On the Sunday morning before Christmas, rescue operations 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. Such collapses are not caused by ongoing hostilities, but the outcome of homes compromised after months of bombardment and ultimately defeated by winter rain. Not long ago, an eight-month-old baby girl in Khan Younis died of exposure to the cold.

A Life in Tents

Walking past the camp nearest my home, I saw the consequences up close. Thin plastic sheets strained under the weight of water, mattresses bobbed in water and clothes remained wet, never fully drying. Each step reminded me how precarious these dwellings are and how close the rain and cold threatened life and health for countless individuals living in tents and cramped refuges.

The majority of these individuals have already been uprooted, many on multiple occasions. Homes are lost. Neighbourhoods leveled. Winter has descended upon Gaza, but defense against it has not. It has come without proper shelter, without electricity, without heating.

A Teacher's Anguish

As a university lecturer in Gaza, this weather causes deep concern. My students are not figures in a report; they are individuals I know; smart, persistent, but extremely fatigued. Most attend online classes from tents; others from overcrowded shelters where solitude is unattainable and connectivity unreliable. Countless learners have already suffered personal loss. Most have lost their homes. Yet they continue their education. Their fortitude is remarkable, but it ought not be necessary in this way.

In Gaza, what would normally count as routine academic practices—projects, due dates—turn into ethical dilemmas, influenced daily by anxiety over students’ safety, warmth and ability to find refuge.

During nights like these, I find myself thinking about them. Do they have dryness? Is there heat? Could the storm have shredded through their shelter during the night? For those remaining in apartments, or what remains of them, there is no heating. With electricity mostly absent and fuel scarce, warmth comes mainly from bundling up and using any remaining covers. Nonetheless, cold nights are unbearable. How then those living in tents?

Political Failure

Figures show that more than a million people in Gaza live in shelters. Aid supplies, including thermal blankets, have been insufficient. During the recent storm, aid organizations reported delivering plastic sheets, tents and mattresses to numerous households. For those affected, however, this assistance was frequently felt to be uneven and inadequate, limited to temporary solutions that did little against prolonged exposure to cold, wind and rain. Structures give way. Respiratory illnesses, hypothermia, and infections linked to damp conditions are increasing.

This cannot be described as an surprise calamity. Winter arrives cyclically. People in Gaza understand this failure not as bad luck, but as neglect. People speak of how critical supplies are restricted or delayed, 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. Solutions exist, but are prevented from arriving.

An Unnecessary Pain

What makes this suffering especially heartbreaking is how unnecessary it should be. No individual ought to study, raise children, or fight illness 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 fragile life has become. It tests bodies worn down by anxiety, fatigue, and loss.

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