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The time was around 8:30 PM on a weekday evening when I made my way home in Gaza City. A strong wind was blowing, forcing me inside any longer, so walking was my only option. In the beginning, it was merely a soft rain, but after about 200 metres the rain intensified abruptly. That wasn’t surprising. I took shelter by a tent, trying to warm my hands to fight off the chill. A young boy had positioned himself selling baked goods. We exchanged a few words during my pause, though he didn’t seem interested. I observed the cookies were poorly packaged in plastic, dampened from the drizzle, and I wondered if he’d have enough to sell before the night ended. The freezing temperature invaded every space.

A Journey Through a Landscape of Tents

While traversing al-Wehda Street in Gaza City, makeshift shelters crowded both sides of the road. There were no voices from inside them, merely the din of falling water and the whistle of the wind. Quickening my pace, trying to dodge the rain, I switched on my mobile phone's torch to see the road ahead. My mind continually drifted to those huddled within: What occupies them now? What are they thinking? What emotions do they hold? The cold was piercing. I envisioned children huddled under soaked bedding, parents moving restlessly to keep them warm.

When I opened the door to my apartment, the freezing handle served as a subtle yet haunting reminder of the hardships endured across Gaza in these harsh winter conditions. I stepped inside my apartment and was overwhelmed by the guilt of enjoying a dry home when so many were exposed to the storm.

The Midnight Hour Intensifies

During the darkest hours, the storm reached its peak. Outside, tarps on damaged glass billowed and tore, while corrugated metal ripped free and fell with a clatter. Overriding the noise came the sharp, panicked screams of children, cutting through the darkness. I felt completely helpless.

During recent days, the rain has been incessant. Cold, heavy, and driven by strong winds, it has drenched shelters, swamped refugee areas and turned bare earth into mud. In different contexts, this might be called “poor conditions”. In Gaza, it is lived with exposure and abandonment.

The Harshest Days

Residents refer to this time of year as al-Arba’iniya; the fourty most severe days of winter, starting from late December and persisting to the end of January. It is the definite start of winter, the moment when the season unleashes its intensity. Typically, it is endured with preparation and shelter. Now, Gaza has no such defenses. The chill penetrates through homes, streets are empty and people simply endure.

But the threat posed by the cold is no longer abstract. In the early hours of Sunday before Christmas, rescue operations retrieved the remains 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 are still unaccounted for. These structural failures are not new attacks, but the outcome of homes damaged from months of bombardment and finally undone by winter rain. Earlier this month, a young child in Khan Younis passed away from exposure to the cold.

Precarious Existence

Observing the camp nearest my home, I observed the results up close. Inadequate coverings buckled beneath the weight of water, mattresses floated and clothes were perpetually moist, incapable of drying. Each step reminded me how vulnerable these tents are and how close the rain and cold threatened life and health for countless individuals living in tents and cramped refuges.

A great number of these residents have already been forced from their homes, many on multiple occasions. Homes are destroyed. Neighbourhoods razed. Winter has arrived in Gaza, but protection from it has not. It has come devoid of safe refuge, in darkness, without heating.

Students in the Storm

In my role as a professor in Gaza, this weather is a heavy burden. My students are not distant names; they are young people I speak to; intelligent, determined, but deeply weary. Most join virtual lessons from tents; others from overcrowded shelters where privacy is impossible and connectivity intermittent. Countless learners have already lost family members. Most have been rendered homeless. Yet they continue their education. Their perseverance is astounding, but it ought not be necessary in this way.

In Gaza, what would normally count as routine academic practices—projects, due dates—transform into questions of conscience, influenced daily by anxiety over students’ security, heat and access to shelter.

When the storm rages, I find myself thinking about them. Are they dry? Are they warm? Could the storm have shredded through their shelter as they attempted to rest? For those residing in apartments, or damaged structures, there is a lack of heat. With electricity mostly absent and fuel rare, warmth comes primarily through bundling up and using any remaining covers. Nonetheless, cold nights are excruciating. How then those living in tents?

Political Failure

Figures show that more than a million people in Gaza exist in makeshift accommodations. Relief items, including weatherproof shelters, have been insufficient. Amid the last tempest, relief groups reported distributing plastic sheets, tents and mattresses to thousands of families. For those affected, however, this assistance was widely experienced as uneven and inadequate, limited to short-term fixes that were largely ineffective against extended hardship to cold, wind and rain. Shelters fail. Chest infections, hypothermia, and infections linked to damp conditions are on the upswing.

This goes beyond an unforeseen disaster. Winter arrives cyclically. People in Gaza understand this failure not as fate, but as abandonment. People speak of how critical supplies are restricted or delayed, while attempts to fix broken houses are repeatedly obstructed. Community efforts have tried to improvise, to hand out tarps, yet they continue to be hampered by bureaucratic barriers. The culpability lies in political and humanitarian. Remedies are known, but are kept out.

An Unnecessary Pain

The factor that intensifies this hardship especially agonizing is how preventable it is. No individual ought to study, raise children, or fight illness standing surrounded by cold water inside a tent. No learner should dread the rain damaging their precious phone. Rain reveals just how precarious existence is. It tests bodies worn down by pressure, weariness, and sorrow.

This year's chill aligns with the Christmas season that, for millions, symbolises warmth, refuge and care for the neediest. In Palestine, that {symbolism