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The time was about 8:30 PM on a weekday evening when I headed back home in Gaza City. The wind howled, forcing me inside any longer, so I had to walk. Initially, it was only a light drizzle, but a short distance later the rain intensified abruptly. It came as no shock. I stopped near a tent, rubbing my palms together to draw some warmth. A young boy had positioned himself selling homemade cookies. We spoke briefly while I stood there, although he appeared disengaged. I noticed the cookies were loosely wrapped in plastic, moist from the drizzle, and I wondered if he’d have enough to sell before the night ended. The cold seeped into everything.

A Journey Through a Place of Tents

Walking down al-Wehda Street in Gaza City, canvas structures flanked both sides of the road. An eerie silence replaced voices from inside them, only the sound of falling water and the roar of the wind. Quickening my pace, seeking escape from the rain, I turned on my mobile phone's torch to see the road ahead. My thoughts kept returning 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 curled under wet blankets, parents shifting constantly to keep them warm.

Upon opening the door to my apartment, the cold metal served as a quiet but powerful reminder of the suffering faced across Gaza in these harsh winter conditions. I stepped inside 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 grew stronger. Outside, plastic sheeting on damaged glass sagged and flapped violently, while corrugated metal tore loose and fell with a clatter. Above it all came the sharp, panicked screams of children, piercing the darkness. I felt totally incapable.

During recent days, the rain has been relentless. Freezing, pouring, and carried by strong winds, it has soaked tents, inundated temporary settlements and turned bare earth into mud. In different contexts, this might be called “poor conditions”. In Gaza, it is experienced amidst exposure and abandonment.

The Cruelest Season

Residents refer to 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 true beginning of winter, the moment when the season unleashes its intensity. Typically, it is faced with preparation and shelter. Now, Gaza has neither. The cold bites through homes, streets are vacant and people simply endure.

But the peril of the season is no longer abstract. On the Sunday morning before Christmas, civil defense teams recovered the bodies of two children after the roof of a shelled home collapsed in northern Gaza, saving five more people, including a child and two women. Two people have not been found. These structural failures are not the result of fresh strikes, but the result of homes compromised after months of bombardment and finally undone by winter rain. Not long ago, a young child in Khan Younis passed away from exposure to the cold.

A Life in Tents

Passing by the camp nearest my home, I observed the results up close. Flimsy tarpaulins strained under the weight of water, mattresses bobbed in water and clothes hung damply, never fully drying. Each step highlighted how vulnerable these tents are and how close the rain and cold threatened life and health for a vast population living in tents and cramped refuges.

Most of these people have already been forced from their homes, many on multiple occasions. Homes are gone. Neighbourhoods flattened. Winter has arrived in Gaza, but defense against it has not. It has come without proper shelter, with no power, without heating.

A Teacher's Anguish

In my role as a professor in Gaza, this weather causes deep concern. My students are not distant names; they are faces I recognize; intelligent, determined, but deeply weary. Most participate in digital sessions from tents; others from cramped quarters where solitude is unattainable and connectivity intermittent. Countless learners have already suffered personal loss. Most have seen their houses destroyed. Yet they persist in learning. Their resilience is extraordinary, but it ought not be necessary in this way.

In Gaza, what would typically constitute routine academic practices—tasks, schedules—transform into questions of conscience, influenced daily by uncertainty about students’ well-being, comfort and access to shelter.

During nights like these, I find myself thinking about them. Do they have dryness? Are they warm? Has the gale ripped through their shelter as they attempted to rest? For those remaining in apartments, or what remains of them, there is an absence of warmth. With electricity mostly absent and fuel rare, warmth comes mostly via donning extra clothing and using whatever blankets are left. Nonetheless, cold nights are intolerable. What about those living in tents?

Political Failure

Figures show that well over a million people in Gaza exist in makeshift accommodations. Relief items, including insulated tents, have been far from enough. Amid the last tempest, relief groups reported providing plastic sheets, tents and mattresses to numerous households. For those affected, however, this assistance was often perceived as inconsistent and lacking, limited to short-term fixes that offered scant protection against extended hardship to cold, wind and rain. Tents collapse. Respiratory illnesses, hypothermia, and infections associated with damp conditions are rising.

This cannot be described as an surprise calamity. Winter is an annual event. People in Gaza view this crisis not as misfortune, but as abandonment. People speak of how essential materials are blocked or slowed, while attempts to fix broken houses are consistently hampered. Local initiatives have tried to improvise, to hand out tarps, yet they are still constrained by bureaucratic barriers. The failure is political and humanitarian. Answers are available, but are prevented from arriving.

A Preventable Suffering

The aspect that renders this pain especially heartbreaking is how avoidable it could have been. It is unconscionable to study, raise children, or combat disease standing ankle-deep in cold water inside a tent. It is wrong for a pupil to worry about the rain destroying their final textbook. Rain lays bare just how fragile life has become. It strains physiques worn down by pressure, weariness, and sorrow.

This winter aligns with the Christmas season that, for millions, epitomizes warmth, refuge and care for the disadvantaged. In Palestine, that {symbolism