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The clock read approximately 8:30 PM on a Thursday when I returned home in Gaza City. The wind howled, forcing me inside any longer, so I had to walk. In the beginning, it was just a gentle sprinkle, but after about 200 metres the rain intensified abruptly. This was expected. I took shelter by a tent, clapping my hands to generate a little heat. A young boy had positioned himself selling homemade cookies. We exchanged a few words while I stood there, though he didn’t seem interested. I saw the cookies were loosely wrapped in plastic, dampened from the drizzle, and I pondered if he’d manage to sell them all before the night ended. The freezing temperature invaded every space.

A Journey Through a Place of Tents

Walking down al-Wehda Street in Gaza City, canvas structures flanked both sides of the road. There were no voices from inside them, merely the din of falling water and the roar of the wind. As I hurried on, attempting to avoid the rain, I switched on my mobile phone's torch to see the road ahead. My mind continually drifted to those taking refuge within: How are they passing the time now? What is their state of mind? How do they feel? The cold was piercing. I envisioned children curled under wet blankets, parents shifting constantly to keep them warm.

As I unlocked the door to my apartment, the freezing handle served as a quiet but powerful reminder of the suffering faced across Gaza in these harsh winter conditions. I entered my apartment and felt consumed by the guilt of enjoying a dry home when a multitude remained unprotected to the storm.

The Midnight Hour Worsens

As midnight passed, the storm reached its peak. Outside, plastic sheeting on damaged glass sagged and flapped violently, while metal sheets broke away and fell with a clatter. Overriding the noise came the sharp, panicked screams of children, piercing the darkness. I felt utterly powerless.

For the last fortnight, the rain has been unending. Chilly, dense, and propelled 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 lived with exposure and abandonment.

The Cruelest Season

Palestinians know this time of year as al-Arba’iniya; the 40 coldest and harshest days of winter, starting from late December and lasting until the end of January. It is the definite start of winter, the moment when the season unleashes its intensity. Normally, it is weathered through preparation and shelter. This year, Gaza has no such defenses. The chill penetrates through homes, streets are vacant and people just persevere.

But the danger of winter is far from theoretical. In the early hours of Sunday before Christmas, rescue operations retrieved the remains of two children after the roof of a bombarded structure collapsed in northern Gaza, freeing five additional individuals, including a child and two women. Two people are still unaccounted for. These structural failures are not new attacks, but the consequence of homes damaged from months of bombardment and ultimately defeated by winter rain. Earlier this month, an eight-month-old baby girl in Khan Younis passed away from exposure to the cold.

Fragile Shelters

Walking past the camp nearest my home, I observed the results up close. Thin plastic sheets strained under the weight of water, mattresses bobbed in water and clothes were perpetually moist, never fully drying. Each step reminded me how precarious these dwellings are and how close the rain and cold came to taking life and health for countless individuals living in tents and overcrowded shelters.

The majority of these individuals have already been uprooted, many repeatedly. Homes are lost. Neighbourhoods razed. Winter has come to Gaza, but shelter from its fury has not. It has come devoid of safe refuge, in darkness, devoid of warmth.

Students in the Storm

Being an educator in Gaza, this weather is a heavy burden. My students are not mere statistics; they are individuals I know; intelligent, determined, but profoundly exhausted. Most join virtual lessons from tents; others from packed rooms where privacy is impossible and connectivity unreliable. Many of my students have already suffered personal loss. Most have lost their homes. Yet they still try to study. Their resilience is extraordinary, but it must not be demanded in this way.

In Gaza, what would normally count as routine academic practices—tasks, schedules—transform into ethical dilemmas, dictated every moment by anxiety over students’ security, heat and proximity to protection.

On evenings such as this, I am constantly preoccupied about them. Do they have dryness? Do they feel any warmth? Could the storm have shredded through their shelter as they attempted to rest? For those remaining in apartments, or the shells that are left, there is an absence of warmth. With electricity largely unavailable and fuel rare, warmth comes mostly via bundling up and using whatever blankets are left. Even so, cold nights are excruciating. How then those living in tents?

Aid and Abandonment

Reports indicate that well over a million people in Gaza reside in temporary housing. Humanitarian assistance, including insulated tents, have been insufficient. Amid the last tempest, relief groups reported distributing coverings, shelters and sleeping materials to thousands of families. On the ground, however, this assistance was widely experienced as uneven and inadequate, limited to temporary solutions that did little against prolonged exposure to cold, wind and rain. Tents collapse. Chest infections, hypothermia, and infections associated with damp conditions are on the upswing.

This cannot be described as an unforeseen disaster. Winter is an annual event. People in Gaza view this crisis not as fate, but as being forsaken. People speak of how essential materials are blocked or slowed, while attempts to fix broken houses are repeatedly obstructed. Grassroots projects have tried to improvise, to hand out tarps, yet they continue to be hampered by restrictions on imports. The culpability lies in political and humanitarian. Answers are available, but are withheld.

A Symbolic Season

The factor that intensifies this hardship especially heartbreaking is how avoidable it could have been. 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 precarious existence is. It tests bodies worn down by stress, exhaustion, and grief.

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