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The time was about 8:30 PM on a weekday evening when I headed back home in Gaza City. Gusts of wind blew, and I couldn’t stay out any longer, so I had to walk. Initially, it was just a gentle sprinkle, but following a brief walk the rain suddenly grew heavier. This was expected. I paused beside a tent, rubbing my palms together to draw some warmth. A young boy had positioned himself selling sweet treats. We spoke briefly as I waited, though he didn’t seem interested. I noticed the cookies were poorly packaged in plastic, moist from the drizzle, and I wondered if he’d manage to sell them all before the night ended. The cold seeped into everything.

A Trek Through a City of Tents

As I walked along al-Wehda Street in Gaza City, tents lined both sides of the road. An eerie silence replaced voices from inside them, merely the din of falling water and the roar of the wind. Rushing forward, trying to dodge 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 is their state of mind? What are they experiencing? It was bitterly cold. I pictured children curled under wet blankets, parents shifting constantly to keep them warm.

Upon opening 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 was overwhelmed by the guilt of enjoying a dry home when a multitude remained unprotected to the storm.

The Midnight Hour Worsens

In the middle of the night, the storm reached its peak. Outside, makeshift covers on damaged glass whipped and strained, while corrugated metal ripped free and crashed to the ground. Cutting through the chaos came the sharp, panicked screams of children, piercing the darkness. I felt utterly powerless.

For the last fortnight, the rain has been incessant. Freezing, pouring, and carried by strong winds, it has flooded makeshift homes, flooded makeshift camps and turned bare earth into mud. Elsewhere, this might be called “inclement weather”. In Gaza, it is experienced amidst exposure and abandonment.

The Harshest Days

Locals call this time of year as al-Arba’iniya; the 40 coldest and harshest days of winter, starting from late December and persisting to the end of January. It is the real onset of winter, the moment when the season reveals its full force. Ordinarily, it is weathered through preparation and shelter. This year, Gaza has no such defenses. The cold bites through homes, streets are deserted and people just persevere.

But the danger of winter is now very real. In the early hours of Sunday before Christmas, rescue operations found the victims 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. Such collapses are not caused by ongoing hostilities, but the result of homes compromised after months of bombardment and finally undone by winter rain. Not long ago, an eight-month-old baby girl in Khan Younis succumbed to exposure to the cold.

A Life in Tents

Passing by the camp nearest my home, I witnessed the impact up close. Flimsy tarpaulins buckled beneath the weight of water, mattresses bobbed in water and clothes were perpetually moist, incapable of drying. Each step reinforced how precarious these dwellings are and how close the rain and cold came to taking life and health for hundreds of thousands living in tents and overcrowded shelters.

The majority of these individuals have already been forced from their homes, many repeatedly. Homes are destroyed. Neighbourhoods flattened. Winter has come to Gaza, but defense against it has not. It has come lacking adequate housing, without electricity, devoid of warmth.

Students in the Storm

As a university lecturer in Gaza, this weather is a heavy burden. My students are not distant names; they are faces I recognize; intelligent, determined, but profoundly exhausted. Most attend online classes from tents; others from overcrowded shelters where privacy is impossible and connectivity intermittent. A significant number of pupils have already experienced bereavement. Most have been rendered homeless. Yet they still try to study. Their perseverance is astounding, but it must not be demanded in this way.

In Gaza, what would usually be routine academic practices—projects, due dates—turn into moral negotiations, dictated every moment by anxiety over students’ safety, warmth and ability to find refuge.

When the storm rages, I am constantly preoccupied about them. Is their shelter holding? Is there heat? Has the gale ripped through their shelter as they attempted to rest? For those residing in apartments, or damaged structures, there is a lack of heat. With electricity largely unavailable and fuel rare, warmth comes primarily through donning extra clothing and using any remaining covers. Even so, cold nights are intolerable. How then those living in tents?

The Humanitarian Shortfall

Agencies state that over a million people in Gaza exist in makeshift accommodations. Relief items, including weatherproof shelters, have been insufficient. When the cyclone hit, humanitarian partners reported distributing plastic sheets, tents and mattresses to a multitude of people. For those affected, however, this assistance was widely experienced as inconsistent and lacking, limited to short-term fixes that did little against extended hardship to cold, wind and rain. Shelters fail. Sicknesses, hypothermia, and infections associated with damp conditions are increasing.

This is not an surprise calamity. Winter arrives cyclically. People in Gaza understand this failure not as misfortune, but as neglect. People speak of how necessary items are blocked or slowed, while attempts to fix broken houses are consistently hampered. Community efforts have tried to find solutions, to hand out tarps, yet they remain limited by what is allowed to enter. The failure is political and humanitarian. Remedies are known, but are withheld.

A Preventable Suffering

The factor that intensifies this hardship especially painful is how avoidable it could have been. No individual ought to study, raise children, or fight illness standing surrounded by cold water inside a tent. It is wrong for a pupil to worry about the rain destroying their final textbook. Rain reveals just how vulnerable survival is. It strains physiques 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 disadvantaged. In Palestine, that {symbolism