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The clock read around 8:30 PM on a weekday evening when I returned home in Gaza City. The wind howled, and I couldn’t stay out any longer, so I had to walk. Initially, it was merely a soft rain, but after about 200 metres the rain intensified abruptly. That wasn’t surprising. I stopped near a tent, trying to warm my hands to draw some warmth. A young boy sat nearby selling homemade cookies. We exchanged a few words while I stood there, but his attention was elsewhere. I saw the cookies were poorly packaged in plastic, dampened from the drizzle, and I wondered if he’d find buyers before the night ended. The cold seeped into everything.

A Walk Through a City of Tents

Walking down al-Wehda Street in Gaza City, makeshift shelters crowded both sides of the road. An eerie silence replaced voices from inside them, just the noise of torrential rain and the moan of the wind. As I hurried on, attempting to avoid the rain, I turned on my mobile phone's torch to illuminate the path. I couldn't stop thinking to those sheltering inside: How are they passing the time now? What are they thinking? What are they experiencing? It was bitterly cold. I imagined children huddled under damp covers, parents shifting constantly to keep them warm.

As I unlocked 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 stepped inside my apartment and couldn't shake the guilt of possessing shelter when so many were exposed to the storm.

The Night Intensifies

In the middle of the night, the storm intensified. Outside, makeshift covers on broken panes billowed and tore, while corrugated metal tore loose and crashed to the ground. Overriding the noise came the sharp, panicked screams of children, cutting through the darkness. I felt completely helpless.

Over the past two weeks, the rain has been incessant. Chilly, dense, and propelled by strong winds, it has soaked tents, flooded makeshift camps and turned open ground into mud. Elsewhere, this might be called “inclement weather”. In Gaza, it is experienced amidst exposure and abandonment.

The Harshest Days

Palestinians know this time of year as al-Arba’iniya; the fourty most severe days of winter, beginning in late December and lasting until the end of January. It is the real onset of winter, the moment when the season shows its true power. Ordinarily, it is weathered through preparation and shelter. Now, Gaza has none of these. The cold bites through homes, streets are vacant and people merely survive.

But the danger of winter is now very real. In the early hours of Sunday 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 are still unaccounted for. Such collapses are not new attacks, but the result 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.

Fragile Shelters

Observing the camp nearest my home, I witnessed the impact up close. Flimsy tarpaulins strained under the weight of water, mattresses bobbed in water and clothes were perpetually moist, incapable of drying. Each step highlighted how fragile these shelters were and how close the rain and cold threatened life and health for hundreds of thousands living in tents and packed sanctuaries.

A great number of these residents have already been forced from their homes, many on multiple occasions. Homes are gone. Neighbourhoods flattened. Winter has come to Gaza, but defense against 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 causes deep concern. My students are not mere statistics; they are individuals I know; intelligent, determined, but profoundly exhausted. Most attend online classes from tents; others from cramped quarters where personal space doesn't exist and connectivity unreliable. A significant number of pupils have already experienced bereavement. Most have seen their houses destroyed. Yet they continue their education. Their perseverance is astounding, but it must not be demanded in this way.

In Gaza, what would normally count as routine academic practices—tasks, schedules—become questions of conscience, shaped each day by concern for students’ safety, warmth and access to shelter.

When the storm rages, I find myself thinking about them. Are they dry? Is there heat? Did the wind tear through their shelter during the night? For those still living in apartments, or what remains of them, there is a lack of heat. With electricity mostly absent and fuel rare, warmth comes primarily through wearing multiple layers and using whatever blankets are left. Nonetheless, cold nights are excruciating. What, then those living in tents?

Aid and Abandonment

Agencies state that well over a million people in Gaza exist in makeshift accommodations. Aid supplies, including weatherproof shelters, have been inadequate. During the recent storm, relief groups reported providing coverings, shelters and sleeping materials to numerous households. In reality, however, this assistance was widely experienced as inconsistent and lacking, limited to temporary solutions that offered scant protection against ongoing suffering to cold, wind and rain. Tents collapse. Chest infections, hypothermia, and infections caused by damp conditions are increasing.

This cannot be described as an surprise calamity. Winter comes every year. People in Gaza view this crisis not as misfortune, but as being forsaken. People speak of how critical supplies are restricted or delayed, while attempts to repair damaged homes are frequently blocked. Grassroots projects have tried to find solutions, to distribute plastic sheeting, yet they remain limited by restrictions on imports. The root cause is political and humanitarian. Solutions exist, but are prevented from arriving.

A Preventable Suffering

The aspect that renders this pain especially painful is how preventable it is. No individual ought to study, raise children, or fight illness standing ankle-deep in cold water inside a tent. No student should fear the rain damaging their precious phone. Rain reveals just how vulnerable survival is. It tests bodies worn down by stress, exhaustion, and grief.

This winter occurs alongside the Christmas season that, for millions, symbolises warmth, refuge and care for the most vulnerable. In Palestine, that {symbolism