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The clock read about 8:30 PM on a Thursday when I returned home in Gaza City. A strong wind was blowing, and I couldn’t stay out any longer, so walking was my only option. In the beginning, it was just a gentle sprinkle, but after about 200 metres the rain intensified abruptly. This was expected. I stopped near a tent, rubbing my palms together to generate a little heat. A young boy had positioned himself selling homemade cookies. We shared brief remarks as I waited, though he didn’t seem interested. I observed the cookies were hastily covered in plastic, moist from the drizzle, and I questioned if he’d manage to sell them all before the night ended. A deep chill permeated the air.

A Journey Through a Place of Tents

While traversing al-Wehda Street in Gaza City, makeshift shelters crowded both sides of the road. There were no voices from inside them, just the noise of falling water and the roar of the wind. Rushing forward, attempting to avoid the rain, I activated my mobile phone's torch to see the road ahead. I couldn't stop thinking to those huddled within: What are they doing now? What thoughts fill their minds? What are they experiencing? It was bitterly cold. I imagined children curled under wet blankets, parents moving restlessly to keep them warm.

When I opened the door to my apartment, the icy doorknob served as a quiet but powerful reminder of the hardships endured across Gaza in these severe cold season. I entered my apartment and couldn't shake the guilt of possessing shelter when countless others faced exposure to the storm.

The Night Intensifies

As midnight passed, the storm intensified. Outside, makeshift covers on broken panes billowed and tore, while corrugated metal tore loose and fell with a clatter. Cutting through the chaos came the piercing, fearful cries of children, shattering the darkness. I felt totally incapable.

For the last fortnight, the rain has been unending. Freezing, pouring, and carried by strong winds, it has drenched shelters, swamped refugee areas and turned the soil into mud. Elsewhere, this might be called “poor conditions”. In Gaza, it is endured in a state of exposure and abandonment.

The Harshest Days

Palestinians know this time of year as al-Arba’iniya; the fourty most severe days of winter, beginning in late December and lasting until the end of January. It is the true beginning of winter, the moment when the season shows its true power. Ordinarily, it is faced with preparation and shelter. This year, Gaza has no such defenses. The frost seeps through homes, streets are deserted and people simply endure.

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 bombarded structure collapsed in northern Gaza, freeing five additional individuals, including a child and two women. Two people remain missing. These structural failures are not new attacks, but the result of homes compromised after months of bombardment and succumbing to winter rain. In recent days, an eight-month-old baby girl in Khan Younis died of exposure to the cold.

Fragile Shelters

Passing by the camp nearest my home, I saw the consequences up close. Thin plastic sheets sagged under the weight of water, mattresses were adrift 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 claiming life and health for hundreds of thousands living in tents and overcrowded shelters.

A great number of these residents have already been displaced, many repeatedly. Homes are gone. Neighbourhoods flattened. Winter has come to Gaza, but shelter from its fury has not. It has come lacking adequate housing, without electricity, without heating.

A Teacher's Anguish

In my role as a professor in Gaza, this weather causes deep concern. My students are not figures in a report; they are faces I recognize; bright, resilient, but extremely fatigued. Most join virtual lessons from tents; others from overcrowded shelters where solitude is unattainable and connectivity unreliable. A significant number of pupils have already lost family members. Most have seen their houses destroyed. Yet they still try to study. Their perseverance is astounding, but it ought not be necessary in this way.

In Gaza, what would normally count as routine academic practices—tasks, schedules—transform into ethical dilemmas, influenced daily by concern for students’ security, heat and proximity to protection.

On evenings such as this, I cannot help but wonder about them. Are they dry? Do they feel any warmth? Did the wind tear through their shelter as they attempted to rest? For those still living in apartments, or damaged structures, there is no heating. With electricity largely unavailable and fuel scarce, warmth comes mostly via bundling up and using any remaining covers. Nonetheless, cold nights are unbearable. How then those living in tents?

Political Failure

Figures show that over a million people in Gaza exist in makeshift accommodations. Aid supplies, including thermal blankets, have been insufficient. During the recent storm, relief groups reported delivering plastic sheets, tents and mattresses to a multitude of people. On the ground, however, this assistance was widely experienced as patchy and insufficient, limited to band-aid measures that offered scant protection against extended hardship to cold, wind and rain. Structures give way. Chest infections, hypothermia, and infections caused by damp conditions are on the upswing.

This cannot be described as an unforeseen disaster. Winter comes every year. People in Gaza interpret this shortcoming not as fate, but as abandonment. People speak of how necessary items are hindered or postponed, while attempts to fix broken houses are frequently blocked. Community efforts have tried to find solutions, to distribute plastic sheeting, yet they continue to be hampered by what is allowed to enter. The culpability lies in political and humanitarian. Answers are available, but are prevented from arriving.

A Symbolic Season

The factor that intensifies this hardship especially heartbreaking is how preventable it is. It is unconscionable to study, raise children, or fight illness standing ankle-deep in cold water inside a tent. No student should fear the rain damaging their precious phone. Rain exposes just how precarious existence is. It strains physiques worn down by pressure, weariness, and sorrow.

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