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The time was about 8:30 PM on a Thursday when I headed back home in Gaza City. Gusts of wind blew, and I couldn’t stay out any longer, leaving me to walk. In the beginning, it was just a gentle sprinkle, but a short distance later the rain intensified abruptly. This was expected. I stopped near a tent, clapping my hands to fight off the chill. A young boy was sitting outside selling homemade cookies. We exchanged a few words as I waited, although he appeared disengaged. I observed the cookies were poorly packaged in plastic, already soggy 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

Walking down al-Wehda Street in Gaza City, tents lined both sides of the road. There were no voices from inside them, only the sound of falling water and the whistle of the wind. As I hurried on, attempting to avoid the rain, I turned on my mobile phone's torch to illuminate the path. My thoughts kept returning to those sheltering inside: How are they passing the time now? What thoughts fill their minds? What are they experiencing? The cold was piercing. I envisioned children nestled under soaked bedding, parents adjusting repeatedly to keep them warm.

When I opened the door to my apartment, the icy doorknob served as a understated yet stark reminder of the struggles borne across Gaza in these severe cold season. I stepped inside my apartment and was overwhelmed by the guilt of having a roof when a multitude remained unprotected to the storm.

The Darkness Escalates

In the middle of the night, the storm grew stronger. Outside, makeshift covers on broken panes billowed and tore, while metal sheets ripped free and crashed to the ground. Overriding the noise came the sharp, panicked screams of children, piercing the darkness. I felt completely helpless.

Over the past two weeks, the rain has been relentless. Cold, heavy, and driven by strong winds, it has flooded makeshift homes, inundated temporary settlements and turned bare earth into mud. Elsewhere, this might be called “inclement weather”. In Gaza, it is experienced amidst exposure and abandonment.

Al-Arba’iniya

Palestinians know this time of year as al-Arba’iniya; the 40 coldest and harshest days of winter, beginning in late December and lasting until the end of January. It is the definite start of winter, the moment when the season reveals its full force. Typically, it is endured with preparation and shelter. This year, Gaza has no such defenses. The frost seeps through homes, streets are vacant and people merely survive.

But the danger of winter is no longer abstract. On the Sunday morning before Christmas, civil defense teams recovered the bodies of two children after the roof of a bombarded structure collapsed in northern Gaza, rescuing five others, including a child and two women. Two people have not been found. These structural failures are not new attacks, but the outcome of homes damaged from months of bombardment and ultimately defeated by winter rain. In recent days, an infant in Khan Younis succumbed to exposure to the cold.

A Life in Tents

Walking past the camp nearest my home, I saw the consequences up close. Thin plastic sheets buckled beneath the weight of water, mattresses were adrift and clothes hung damply, always damp. Each step reinforced how fragile these shelters were and how close the rain and cold came to claiming life and health for a vast population living in tents and overcrowded shelters.

Most of these people have already been displaced, many repeatedly. Homes are destroyed. Neighbourhoods razed. Winter has descended upon Gaza, but protection from it has not. It has come devoid of safe refuge, in darkness, devoid of warmth.

Students in the Storm

As a university lecturer in Gaza, this weather causes deep concern. My students are not figures in a report; they are young people I speak to; bright, resilient, but deeply weary. Most join virtual lessons from tents; others from overcrowded shelters where solitude is unattainable and connectivity unreliable. Countless learners have already suffered personal loss. Most have seen their houses destroyed. Yet they persist in learning. Their fortitude is remarkable, but it must not be demanded in this way.

In Gaza, what would usually be routine academic practices—assignments, deadlines—turn into moral negotiations, shaped each day by anxiety over students’ safety, warmth and proximity to protection.

On evenings such as this, I find myself thinking about them. Do they have dryness? Do they feel any warmth? Has the gale ripped through their shelter as they attempted to rest? 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 donning extra clothing and using any remaining covers. Even so, cold nights are intolerable. How then those living in tents?

The Humanitarian Shortfall

Reports indicate that over a million people in Gaza reside in temporary housing. Aid supplies, including insulated tents, have been far from enough. Amid the last tempest, humanitarian partners reported delivering coverings, shelters and sleeping materials to a multitude of people. In reality, however, this assistance was widely experienced as inconsistent and lacking, limited to band-aid measures that offered scant protection against ongoing suffering to cold, wind and rain. Tents collapse. Respiratory illnesses, hypothermia, and infections caused by damp conditions are on the upswing.

This cannot be described as an surprise calamity. Winter is an annual event. People in Gaza understand this failure not as misfortune, but as abandonment. People speak of how critical supplies are blocked or slowed, while attempts to reinforce weakened structures are frequently blocked. Community efforts have tried to improvise, to distribute plastic sheeting, yet they remain limited by bureaucratic barriers. The root cause is political and humanitarian. Solutions exist, but are kept out.

A Symbolic Season

The aspect that renders this pain especially heartbreaking is how preventable it is. No individual ought to study, raise children, or combat disease standing knee-high in cold water inside a tent. No learner should dread the rain ruining their last notebook. Rain lays bare just how vulnerable survival is. It tests bodies worn down by stress, exhaustion, and grief.

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