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The clock read about 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 I had to walk. In the beginning, it was merely a soft rain, but a short distance later the rain suddenly grew heavier. This was expected. I paused beside a tent, clapping my hands to generate a little heat. A young boy sat nearby selling homemade cookies. We exchanged a few words while I stood there, but his attention was elsewhere. I saw the cookies were loosely wrapped in plastic, moist from the drizzle, and I questioned if he’d find buyers before the night ended. The freezing temperature invaded every space.

A Journey Through a Landscape of Tents

While traversing al-Wehda Street in Gaza City, tents lined both sides of the road. No sounds of conversation came from inside them, only the sound of torrential rain and the whistle of the wind. As I hurried on, attempting to avoid the rain, I switched on my mobile phone's torch to illuminate the path. My thoughts kept returning to those huddled within: What occupies them now? What are they thinking? How do they feel? It was bitterly cold. I imagined children curled under soaked bedding, parents adjusting repeatedly to keep them warm.

When I opened the door to my apartment, the cold metal served as a subtle yet haunting reminder of the hardships endured across Gaza in these severe cold season. I walked into my apartment and felt consumed by the guilt of having a roof when a multitude remained unprotected to the storm.

The Darkness Intensifies

In the middle of the night, the storm intensified. Outside, tarps on broken panes billowed and tore, while tin roofing tore loose and crashed to the ground. Cutting through the chaos came the piercing, fearful cries of children, shattering the darkness. I felt completely helpless.

During recent days, the rain has been unending. Chilly, dense, and propelled by strong winds, it has soaked tents, flooded makeshift camps and turned bare earth into mud. In other places, this might be called “bad weather”. In Gaza, it is lived with exposure and abandonment.

Al-Arba’iniya

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 reveals its full force. Normally, it is endured with preparation and shelter. This year, Gaza has no such defenses. The cold bites through homes, streets are deserted and people merely survive.

But the threat posed by the cold is far from theoretical. In the early hours of Sunday before Christmas, civil defense teams retrieved the remains 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 are still unaccounted for. These incidents are not new attacks, but the result of homes weakened by months of bombardment and finally undone by winter rain. Not long ago, an infant in Khan Younis passed away from exposure to the cold.

A Life in Tents

Walking past the camp nearest my home, I observed the results up close. Inadequate coverings sagged under the weight of water, mattresses bobbed in water and clothes hung damply, never fully drying. Each step reinforced how vulnerable these tents are and how close the rain and cold came to taking life and health for countless individuals living in tents and packed sanctuaries.

The majority of these individuals have already been forced from their homes, many repeatedly. Homes are lost. Neighbourhoods razed. Winter has arrived in Gaza, but protection from it has not. It has come lacking adequate housing, without electricity, lacking heat.

A Teacher's Anguish

As a university lecturer in Gaza, this weather weighs heavily on me. My students are not figures in a report; they are faces I recognize; bright, resilient, but profoundly exhausted. Most participate in digital sessions from tents; others from cramped quarters where personal space doesn't exist and connectivity unreliable. Many of my students have already suffered personal loss. Most have seen their houses destroyed. Yet they persist in learning. Their fortitude is remarkable, but it must not be demanded in this way.

In Gaza, what would typically constitute routine academic practices—projects, due dates—become questions of conscience, dictated every moment by concern for students’ safety, warmth and proximity to protection.

During nights like these, I find myself thinking about them. Are they dry? Are they warm? Has the gale ripped through their shelter while they were trying to sleep? For those remaining in apartments, or what remains of them, there is no heating. With electricity largely unavailable and fuel scarce, warmth comes primarily through bundling up and using whatever blankets are left. Despite this, cold nights are unbearable. What, then those living in tents?

Aid and Abandonment

Reports indicate that over a million people in Gaza live in shelters. Relief items, including insulated tents, have been insufficient. Amid the last tempest, humanitarian partners reported delivering plastic sheets, tents and mattresses to a multitude of people. In reality, however, this assistance was widely experienced as inconsistent and lacking, limited to temporary solutions that offered scant protection against extended hardship to cold, wind and rain. Tents collapse. Respiratory illnesses, hypothermia, and infections linked to damp conditions are increasing.

This is not an surprise calamity. Winter is an annual event. People in Gaza understand this failure not as misfortune, but as neglect. People speak of how critical supplies 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 bureaucratic barriers. The failure is political and humanitarian. Answers are available, but are withheld.

An Unnecessary Pain

The aspect that renders this pain especially heartbreaking is how unnecessary it should be. No one should have to study, raise children, or fight illness standing knee-high in cold water inside a tent. No student should fear the rain ruining their last notebook. Rain lays bare just how precarious existence is. It challenges health worn down by pressure, weariness, and sorrow.

The current cold season coincides with the Christmas season that, for millions, epitomizes warmth, refuge and care for the disadvantaged. In Palestine, that {symbolism