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The clock read about 8:30 PM on a weekday evening when I made my way home in Gaza City. Gusts of wind blew, forcing me inside any longer, leaving me to walk. At first, it was just a gentle sprinkle, but after about 200 metres the rain intensified abruptly. This was expected. I paused beside a tent, rubbing my palms together to draw some warmth. A young boy was sitting outside selling homemade cookies. We shared brief remarks during my pause, but his attention was elsewhere. I saw the cookies were poorly packaged in plastic, already soggy from the drizzle, and I pondered if he’d have enough to sell before the night ended. The freezing temperature invaded every space.

A Trek Through a City of Tents

While traversing 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. As I hurried on, trying to dodge the rain, I turned on my mobile phone's torch to see the road ahead. I couldn't stop thinking to those sheltering inside: How are they passing the time now? What is their state of mind? How do they feel? The cold was piercing. I pictured children huddled under damp covers, parents shifting constantly to keep them warm.

Upon opening the door to my apartment, the freezing handle served as a understated yet stark reminder of the suffering faced across Gaza in these harsh winter conditions. I walked into my apartment and felt consumed by the guilt of having a roof when a multitude remained unprotected to the storm.

The Night Worsens

In the middle of the night, the storm reached its peak. Outside, plastic sheeting on shattered windows sagged and flapped violently, while metal sheets ripped free and crashed to the ground. Above it all came the desperate, terrified shouts of children, cutting through the darkness. I felt completely helpless.

For the last fortnight, the rain has been incessant. Freezing, pouring, and carried by strong winds, it has soaked tents, inundated temporary settlements and turned the soil into mud. In other places, this might be called “inclement weather”. In Gaza, it is endured in a state of exposure and abandonment.

The Cruelest Season

Palestinians know this time of year as al-Arba’iniya; the most bitter forty days of winter, starting from late December and persisting to the end of January. It is the definite start of winter, the moment when the season shows its true power. Ordinarily, it is faced with preparation and shelter. Now, Gaza has neither. The chill penetrates through homes, streets are deserted and people merely survive.

But the peril of the season is no longer abstract. In the early hours of Sunday before Christmas, recovery efforts recovered the bodies of two children after the roof of a war-damaged building collapsed in northern Gaza, saving five more people, 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. 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 witnessed the impact up close. Flimsy tarpaulins sagged under the weight of water, mattresses bobbed in water and clothes were perpetually moist, incapable of drying. Each step reinforced how vulnerable these tents are and how close the rain and cold came to taking life and health for hundreds of thousands living in tents and overcrowded shelters.

Most of these people have already been forced from their homes, many repeatedly. Homes are gone. Neighbourhoods leveled. Winter has descended upon Gaza, but protection from it has not. It has come devoid of safe refuge, in darkness, lacking heat.

A Teacher's Anguish

As a university lecturer in Gaza, this weather weighs heavily on me. My students are not mere statistics; they are faces I recognize; smart, persistent, but deeply weary. Most join virtual lessons from tents; others from packed rooms where privacy is impossible and connectivity intermittent. Countless learners have already suffered personal loss. Most have lost their homes. Yet they still try to study. Their resilience is extraordinary, but it should not be required in this way.

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

During nights like these, I am constantly preoccupied about them. Is their shelter holding? Is there heat? Could the storm have shredded through their shelter during the night? For those remaining in apartments, or the shells that are left, there is no heating. With electricity largely unavailable and fuel scarce, warmth comes mainly from wearing multiple layers and using the few bedding items available. Even so, cold nights are intolerable. How then those living in tents?

The Humanitarian Shortfall

Agencies state that more than a million people in Gaza exist in makeshift accommodations. Relief items, including insulated tents, have been far from enough. During the recent storm, relief groups reported delivering coverings, shelters and sleeping materials to thousands of families. On the ground, however, this assistance was frequently felt to be uneven and inadequate, limited to short-term fixes that offered scant protection against prolonged exposure to cold, wind and rain. Structures give way. Respiratory illnesses, hypothermia, and infections caused by damp conditions are rising.

This is not an surprise calamity. Winter comes every year. People in Gaza understand this failure not as bad luck, but as neglect. People speak of how critical supplies are blocked or slowed, while attempts to reinforce weakened structures are consistently hampered. Grassroots projects have tried to improvise, to distribute plastic sheeting, yet they are still constrained by bureaucratic barriers. The root cause is political and humanitarian. Solutions exist, but are kept out.

A Symbolic Season

The aspect that renders this pain especially agonizing is how avoidable it could have been. No individual ought to study, raise children, or combat disease 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 precarious existence is. It tests bodies worn down by anxiety, fatigue, and loss.

The current cold season occurs alongside the Christmas season that, for millions, represents warmth, refuge and care for the most vulnerable. In Palestine, that {symbolism