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The clock read about 8:30 PM on a Thursday when I returned home in Gaza City. Gusts of wind blew, forcing me inside any longer, so I had to walk. In the beginning, it was just a gentle sprinkle, but after about 200 metres the rain suddenly grew heavier. It came as no shock. I paused beside a tent, rubbing my palms together to generate a little heat. A young boy had positioned himself selling baked goods. We shared brief remarks during my pause, though he didn’t seem interested. I saw the cookies were poorly packaged in plastic, dampened 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 Trek Through a City of Tents

While traversing al-Wehda Street in Gaza City, makeshift shelters crowded both sides of the road. No sounds of conversation came from inside them, just the noise of rain pouring down and the roar of the wind. Rushing forward, attempting to avoid the rain, I activated my mobile phone's torch to light my way. My thoughts kept returning to those huddled within: How are they passing the time now? What are they thinking? What emotions do they hold? A severe chill gripped the air. I envisioned children huddled under wet blankets, parents adjusting repeatedly to keep them warm.

When I opened the door to my apartment, the icy doorknob served as a quiet but powerful reminder of the suffering faced across Gaza in these severe cold season. I stepped inside my apartment and couldn't shake the guilt of enjoying a dry home when so many were exposed to the storm.

The Midnight Hour Intensifies

As midnight passed, the storm reached its peak. Outside, plastic sheeting on damaged glass whipped and strained, while tin roofing tore loose and slammed down. Above it all came the sharp, panicked screams of children, cutting through the darkness. I felt totally incapable.

Over the past two weeks, the rain has been relentless. Chilly, dense, and propelled by strong winds, it has drenched shelters, flooded makeshift camps and turned bare earth into mud. In other places, this might be called “bad weather”. In Gaza, it is experienced amidst exposure and abandonment.

The Cruelest Season

Residents refer to this time of year as al-Arba’iniya; the 40 coldest and harshest days of winter, beginning 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. Ordinarily, it is faced with preparation and shelter. Currently, Gaza has no such defenses. The cold bites through homes, streets are vacant and people merely survive.

But the danger of winter 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, rescuing five others, including a child and two women. Two people have not been found. These structural failures are not new attacks, but the result of homes damaged from months of bombardment and succumbing to winter rain. In recent days, a young child in Khan Younis passed away from exposure to the cold.

Fragile Shelters

Walking past the camp nearest my home, I saw the consequences up close. Inadequate coverings buckled beneath 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 a vast population living in tents and cramped refuges.

The majority of these individuals have already been uprooted, many several times over. Homes are gone. Neighbourhoods leveled. Winter has arrived in Gaza, but protection from it has not. It has come devoid of safe refuge, in darkness, lacking heat.

Students in the Storm

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; smart, persistent, but extremely fatigued. Most attend online classes from tents; others from packed rooms where personal space doesn't exist and connectivity unreliable. Many of my students have already suffered personal loss. Most have been rendered homeless. Yet they persist in learning. Their fortitude is remarkable, but it ought not be necessary in this way.

In Gaza, what would typically constitute routine academic practices—tasks, schedules—transform into moral negotiations, shaped each day by uncertainty about students’ well-being, comfort and proximity to protection.

When the storm rages, I find myself thinking 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 what remains of them, there is no heating. With electricity mostly absent and fuel rare, warmth comes mainly from bundling up and using the few bedding items available. Even so, cold nights are unbearable. How then those living in tents?

Aid and Abandonment

Figures show that more than a million people in Gaza reside in temporary housing. Aid supplies, including weatherproof shelters, have been far from enough. Amid the last tempest, relief groups reported distributing plastic sheets, tents and mattresses to thousands of families. For those affected, however, this assistance was widely experienced as patchy and insufficient, limited to short-term fixes that offered scant protection against extended hardship to cold, wind and rain. Shelters fail. Respiratory illnesses, hypothermia, and infections associated with damp conditions are increasing.

This goes beyond an unforeseen disaster. Winter arrives cyclically. People in Gaza interpret this shortcoming not as bad luck, but as being forsaken. People speak of how critical supplies are hindered or postponed, while attempts to reinforce weakened structures are consistently hampered. Community efforts have tried to make do, to hand out tarps, yet they continue to be hampered by what is allowed to enter. The failure is political and humanitarian. Remedies are known, but are prevented from arriving.

An Unnecessary Pain

The aspect that renders this pain especially heartbreaking is how avoidable it could have been. No one should have to study, raise children, or fight illness standing ankle-deep in cold water inside a tent. No learner should dread the rain ruining their last notebook. Rain lays bare just how fragile life has become. It strains physiques worn down by anxiety, fatigue, and loss.

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