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It was approximately 8:30 PM on a Thursday when I headed back home in Gaza City. A strong wind was blowing, making it impossible to remain any longer, so I had to walk. Initially, it was just a gentle sprinkle, but after about 200 metres the rain became a downpour. It came as no shock. I stopped near a tent, clapping my hands to draw some warmth. A young boy was sitting outside selling baked goods. We exchanged a few words as I waited, although he appeared disengaged. I observed the cookies were hastily covered in plastic, dampened from the drizzle, and I questioned if he’d manage to sell them all before the night ended. The cold seeped into everything.

A Walk 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, only the sound of rain pouring down and the roar of the wind. As I hurried on, seeking escape from the rain, I turned on my mobile phone's torch to light my way. My thoughts kept returning to those huddled within: What are they doing now? What thoughts fill their minds? What emotions do they hold? A severe chill gripped the air. I pictured children curled under wet blankets, parents moving restlessly to keep them warm.

As I unlocked the door to my apartment, the icy doorknob served as a subtle yet haunting reminder of the struggles borne across Gaza in these harsh winter conditions. I entered my apartment and felt consumed by the guilt of possessing shelter when countless others faced exposure to the storm.

The Darkness Intensifies

In the middle of the night, the storm intensified. Outside, plastic sheeting on broken panes whipped and strained, while corrugated metal broke away and fell with a clatter. Above it all came the piercing, fearful cries of children, cutting through the darkness. I felt totally incapable.

For the last fortnight, the rain has been unending. Cold, heavy, and driven by strong winds, it has drenched shelters, flooded makeshift camps and turned open ground into mud. Elsewhere, this might be called “bad weather”. In Gaza, it is lived with exposure and abandonment.

The Cruelest Season

Palestinians know this time of year as al-Arba’iniya; the fourty most severe 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 unleashes its intensity. Typically, it is endured with preparation and shelter. Currently, Gaza has none of these. The frost seeps through homes, streets are vacant and people merely survive.

But the peril of the season is far from theoretical. In the early hours of Sunday before Christmas, civil defense teams found the victims of two children after the roof of a shelled home collapsed in northern Gaza, freeing five additional individuals, including a child and two women. Two people are still unaccounted for. These incidents are not the result of fresh strikes, but the result of homes damaged from months of bombardment and ultimately defeated by winter rain. In recent days, an infant in Khan Younis died of exposure to the cold.

Precarious Existence

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, always damp. Each step reminded me how vulnerable these tents are and how close the rain and cold came to claiming life and health for hundreds of thousands living in tents and cramped refuges.

A great number of these residents have already been uprooted, many several times over. Homes are destroyed. Neighbourhoods flattened. Winter has come to Gaza, but shelter from its fury has not. It has come devoid of safe refuge, without electricity, lacking heat.

Students in the Storm

In my role as a professor in Gaza, this weather weighs heavily on me. My students are not figures in a report; they are faces I recognize; intelligent, determined, but extremely fatigued. Most join virtual lessons from tents; others from packed rooms where solitude is unattainable and connectivity sporadic. Many of my students have already lost family members. 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 typically constitute routine academic practices—tasks, schedules—become ethical dilemmas, shaped each day by anxiety over students’ security, heat and ability to find refuge.

On evenings such as this, I find myself thinking about them. Is their shelter holding? Are they warm? Has the gale ripped through their shelter as they attempted to rest? For those remaining in apartments, or damaged structures, there is an absence of warmth. With electricity mostly absent and fuel rare, warmth comes mostly via donning extra clothing and using the few bedding items available. Nonetheless, cold nights are intolerable. How then those living in tents?

Aid and Abandonment

Figures show that more than a million people in Gaza exist in makeshift accommodations. Relief items, including thermal blankets, have been inadequate. When the cyclone hit, humanitarian partners reported delivering plastic sheets, tents and mattresses to a multitude of people. In reality, however, this assistance was often perceived as inconsistent and lacking, limited to temporary solutions that did little against prolonged exposure to cold, wind and rain. Shelters fail. Respiratory illnesses, hypothermia, and infections associated with damp conditions are on the upswing.

This goes beyond an unexpected catastrophe. Winter is an annual event. People in Gaza interpret this shortcoming not as bad luck, but as neglect. People speak of how essential materials are hindered or postponed, while attempts to reinforce weakened structures are consistently hampered. Local initiatives have tried to improvise, 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 withheld.

A Preventable Suffering

What makes this suffering especially agonizing is how unnecessary it should be. No one should have to study, raise children, or combat disease standing surrounded by cold water inside a tent. No learner should dread the rain damaging their precious phone. Rain exposes just how precarious existence is. It challenges health worn down by pressure, weariness, and sorrow.

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