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The time was around 8:30 PM on a Thursday when I made my way home in Gaza City. A strong wind was blowing, forcing me inside any longer, so I had to walk. Initially, it was merely a soft rain, but after about 200 metres the rain intensified abruptly. This was expected. I took shelter by a tent, clapping my hands to draw some warmth. A young boy was sitting outside selling baked goods. We exchanged a few words during my pause, though he didn’t seem interested. I saw the cookies were hastily covered in plastic, dampened from the drizzle, and I wondered if he’d have enough to sell before the night ended. The cold seeped into everything.

A Trek Through a Place of Tents

While traversing al-Wehda Street in Gaza City, canvas structures flanked both sides of the road. There were no voices from inside them, just the noise of falling water and the whistle of the wind. Rushing forward, attempting to avoid the rain, I turned on my mobile phone's torch to light my way. I couldn't stop thinking to those sheltering inside: What occupies them now? What is their state of mind? What are they experiencing? The cold was piercing. I imagined children nestled under damp covers, parents adjusting repeatedly to keep them warm.

As I unlocked the door to my apartment, the icy doorknob served as a subtle yet haunting reminder of the suffering faced across Gaza in these severe cold season. I entered my apartment and couldn't shake the guilt of enjoying a dry home when so many were exposed to the storm.

The Midnight Hour Escalates

During the darkest hours, the storm intensified. Outside, tarps on damaged glass whipped and strained, while corrugated metal ripped free and slammed down. Above it all came the desperate, terrified shouts of children, cutting through the darkness. I felt utterly powerless.

During recent days, the rain has been relentless. Freezing, pouring, and carried by strong winds, it has soaked tents, flooded makeshift camps and turned bare earth into mud. In other places, this might be called “poor conditions”. In Gaza, it is lived with exposure and abandonment.

The Harshest Days

Residents refer to 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 true beginning of winter, the moment when the season unleashes its intensity. Typically, it is faced with preparation and shelter. Currently, Gaza has no such defenses. The frost seeps through homes, streets are vacant and people merely survive.

But the peril of the season is far from theoretical. On the Sunday morning before Christmas, recovery efforts recovered the bodies of two children after the roof of a shelled home collapsed in northern Gaza, freeing five additional individuals, including a child and two women. Two people remain missing. These structural failures are not the result of fresh strikes, but the result of homes weakened by months of bombardment and ultimately defeated by winter rain. Not long ago, a young child in Khan Younis died of exposure to the cold.

A Life in Tents

Walking past the camp nearest my home, I observed the results up close. Inadequate coverings buckled beneath the weight of water, mattresses bobbed in water and clothes were perpetually moist, incapable of drying. Each step reminded me 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 cramped refuges.

Most of these people have already been displaced, many repeatedly. Homes are lost. Neighbourhoods flattened. Winter has descended upon Gaza, but protection from it has not. It has come devoid of safe refuge, in darkness, devoid of warmth.

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 young people I speak to; intelligent, determined, but profoundly exhausted. Most attend online classes from tents; others from packed rooms where personal space doesn't exist and connectivity sporadic. Many of my students have already experienced bereavement. Most have lost their homes. Yet they still try to study. Their fortitude is remarkable, but it should not be required in this way.

In Gaza, what would usually be routine academic practices—tasks, schedules—transform into questions of conscience, dictated every moment by anxiety over students’ security, heat and access to shelter.

On evenings such as this, I find myself thinking about them. Is their shelter holding? Do they feel any warmth? Did the wind tear through their shelter during the night? For those still living in apartments, or the shells that are left, there is an absence of warmth. With electricity largely unavailable and fuel in short supply, warmth comes primarily through bundling up and using any remaining covers. Despite this, cold nights are unbearable. What about those living in tents?

The Humanitarian Shortfall

Agencies state that more than a million people in Gaza reside in temporary housing. Relief items, including insulated tents, have been inadequate. Amid the last tempest, humanitarian partners reported providing tarpaulins, tents and bedding to numerous households. For those affected, however, this assistance was frequently felt to be patchy and insufficient, limited to short-term fixes that did little against prolonged exposure to cold, wind and rain. Tents collapse. Sicknesses, hypothermia, and infections caused by damp conditions are on the upswing.

This goes beyond an unexpected catastrophe. Winter is an annual event. People in Gaza understand this failure not as bad luck, but as neglect. People speak of how essential materials are blocked or slowed, while attempts to repair damaged homes are repeatedly obstructed. Grassroots projects have tried to make do, to distribute plastic sheeting, yet they are still constrained by bureaucratic barriers. The root cause 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 battle sickness standing surrounded by cold water inside a tent. It is wrong for a pupil to worry about the rain damaging their precious phone. Rain exposes just how vulnerable survival is. It tests bodies worn down by anxiety, fatigue, and loss.

This year's chill occurs alongside the Christmas season that, for millions, symbolises warmth, refuge and care for the disadvantaged. In Palestine, that {symbolism