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The time was 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 walking was my only option. At first, it was only a light drizzle, 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 sat nearby selling baked goods. We spoke briefly during my pause, though he didn’t seem interested. I observed the cookies were hastily covered 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 Landscape of Tents

Walking down al-Wehda Street in Gaza City, tents lined both sides of the road. There were no voices from inside them, merely the din of rain pouring down and the whistle of the wind. As I hurried on, trying to dodge the rain, I switched on my mobile phone's torch to illuminate the path. My thoughts kept returning to those sheltering inside: What are they doing now? What are they thinking? What are they experiencing? A severe chill gripped the air. I envisioned children huddled under damp covers, parents adjusting repeatedly to keep them warm.

Upon opening the door to my apartment, the icy doorknob served as a subtle yet haunting reminder of the hardships endured across Gaza in these severe cold season. I walked into my apartment and was overwhelmed by the guilt of possessing shelter when so many were exposed to the storm.

The Midnight Hour Escalates

As midnight passed, the storm reached its peak. Outside, plastic sheeting on broken panes billowed and tore, while tin roofing ripped free and fell with a clatter. Overriding the noise came the desperate, terrified shouts of children, piercing the darkness. I felt utterly powerless.

During recent days, the rain has been incessant. Cold, heavy, and driven by strong winds, it has soaked tents, flooded makeshift camps and turned the soil into mud. In different contexts, this might be called “inclement weather”. In Gaza, it is lived with exposure and abandonment.

Al-Arba’iniya

Locals call 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. Ordinarily, it is faced with preparation and shelter. This year, 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. In the early hours of Sunday before Christmas, rescue operations retrieved the remains of two children after the roof of a war-damaged building 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 the result of fresh strikes, but the outcome of homes damaged from months of bombardment and succumbing to winter rain. Not long ago, a young child in Khan Younis died of exposure to the cold.

Precarious Existence

Walking past the camp nearest my home, I witnessed the impact up close. Inadequate coverings strained under the weight of water, mattresses were adrift and clothes hung damply, always damp. Each step highlighted how precarious these dwellings are and how close the rain and cold threatened life and health for hundreds of thousands living in tents and cramped refuges.

Most of these people have already been forced from their homes, many repeatedly. Homes are gone. Neighbourhoods flattened. Winter has come to Gaza, but protection from it has not. It has come lacking adequate housing, with no power, lacking heat.

Students in the Storm

In my role as a professor in Gaza, this weather causes deep concern. My students are not figures in a report; they are young people I speak to; intelligent, determined, but extremely fatigued. Most join virtual lessons from tents; others from packed rooms where privacy is impossible and connectivity unreliable. A significant number of pupils have already lost family members. Most have lost their homes. Yet they continue their education. Their perseverance is astounding, but it should not be required in this way.

In Gaza, what would normally count as routine academic practices—projects, due dates—become questions of conscience, influenced daily by anxiety over students’ security, heat and proximity to protection.

When the storm rages, I am constantly preoccupied about them. Are they dry? 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 a lack of heat. With electricity scarce and fuel in short supply, warmth comes mainly from donning extra clothing and using whatever blankets are left. Even so, cold nights are intolerable. What, then those living in tents?

Political Failure

Reports indicate that more than a million people in Gaza live in shelters. Humanitarian assistance, including thermal blankets, have been inadequate. Amid the last tempest, humanitarian partners reported providing coverings, shelters and sleeping materials to a multitude of people. On the ground, however, this assistance was widely experienced as uneven and inadequate, limited to temporary solutions that offered scant protection against ongoing suffering to cold, wind and rain. Structures give way. Respiratory illnesses, hypothermia, and infections associated with damp conditions are increasing.

This cannot be described as an unexpected catastrophe. Winter arrives cyclically. People in Gaza understand this failure not as bad luck, but as being forsaken. People speak of how necessary items are blocked or slowed, while attempts to reinforce weakened structures are frequently blocked. Grassroots projects have tried to make do, to provide coverings, yet they are still constrained by what is allowed to enter. The root cause is political and humanitarian. Solutions exist, but are prevented from arriving.

A Preventable Suffering

What makes this suffering especially agonizing is how unnecessary it should be. No one should have to study, raise children, or battle sickness standing ankle-deep in cold water inside a tent. No student should fear the rain destroying their final textbook. Rain exposes just how precarious existence is. It tests bodies worn down by anxiety, fatigue, and loss.

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