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The time was around 8:30 PM on a weekday evening when I headed back home in Gaza City. A strong wind was blowing, making it impossible to remain any longer, so I had to walk. Initially, it was just a gentle sprinkle, but after about 200 metres the rain intensified abruptly. It came as no shock. I took shelter by a tent, trying to warm my hands to generate a little heat. A young boy sat nearby selling baked goods. We exchanged a few words as I waited, though he didn’t seem interested. I saw the cookies were poorly packaged in plastic, moist from the drizzle, and I wondered if he’d manage to sell them all before the night ended. A deep chill permeated the air.

A Journey Through a City 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, only the sound of falling water and the roar of the wind. Quickening my pace, trying to dodge the rain, I turned on my mobile phone's torch to illuminate the path. My thoughts kept returning to those taking refuge within: How are they passing the time now? What thoughts fill their minds? What are they experiencing? The cold was piercing. I envisioned children huddled under wet blankets, parents adjusting repeatedly to keep them warm.

When I opened the door to my apartment, the cold metal served as a understated yet stark reminder of the struggles borne across Gaza in these severe cold season. I stepped inside my apartment and couldn't shake the guilt of enjoying a dry home when a multitude remained unprotected to the storm.

The Midnight Hour Worsens

As midnight passed, the storm intensified. Outside, makeshift covers on broken panes sagged and flapped violently, while tin roofing broke away and fell with a clatter. Overriding the noise came the piercing, fearful cries of children, cutting through the darkness. I felt utterly powerless.

For the last fortnight, the rain has been incessant. Cold, heavy, and driven by strong winds, it has flooded makeshift homes, swamped refugee areas and turned open ground into mud. In different contexts, this might be called “inclement weather”. In Gaza, it is experienced amidst exposure and abandonment.

The Cruelest Season

Palestinians know this time of year as al-Arba’iniya; the fourty most severe days of winter, commencing 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. Currently, Gaza has no such defenses. The chill penetrates through homes, streets are empty and people merely survive.

But the peril of the season is far from theoretical. In the early hours of Sunday before Christmas, rescue operations 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 are still unaccounted for. Such collapses are not caused by ongoing hostilities, but the result of homes damaged from months of bombardment and ultimately defeated by winter rain. In recent days, an eight-month-old baby girl in Khan Younis succumbed to exposure to the cold.

Precarious Existence

Walking past the camp nearest my home, I saw the consequences up close. Thin plastic sheets sagged under the weight of water, mattresses floated and clothes were perpetually moist, always damp. Each step highlighted how precarious these dwellings 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 uprooted, many repeatedly. Homes are gone. Neighbourhoods flattened. Winter has arrived in Gaza, but shelter from its fury has not. It has come without proper shelter, without electricity, devoid of warmth.

Students in the Storm

As a university lecturer in Gaza, this weather causes deep concern. My students are not distant names; they are young people I speak to; bright, resilient, but profoundly exhausted. Most attend online classes from tents; others from packed rooms where privacy is impossible and connectivity unreliable. A significant number of pupils have already suffered personal loss. Most have lost their homes. Yet they continue their education. Their perseverance is astounding, but it should not be required in this way.

In Gaza, what would usually be routine academic practices—assignments, deadlines—become questions of conscience, dictated every moment by uncertainty about students’ security, heat and ability to find refuge.

During nights like these, I cannot help but wonder about them. Do they have dryness? 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 no heating. With electricity scarce and fuel in short supply, warmth comes mostly via donning extra clothing and using whatever blankets are left. Despite this, cold nights are intolerable. What about 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 insufficient. Amid the last tempest, relief groups reported delivering coverings, shelters and sleeping materials to thousands of families. On the ground, however, this assistance was often perceived as uneven and inadequate, limited to short-term fixes that did little against prolonged exposure to cold, wind and rain. Structures give way. Sicknesses, hypothermia, and infections caused by damp conditions are on the upswing.

This is not an unexpected catastrophe. Winter is an annual event. People in Gaza interpret this shortcoming not as bad luck, but as abandonment. People speak of how essential materials are restricted or delayed, while attempts to fix broken houses are consistently hampered. Grassroots projects have tried to improvise, to distribute plastic sheeting, yet they remain limited by what is allowed to enter. The root cause is political and humanitarian. Solutions exist, but are prevented from arriving.

A Preventable Suffering

The aspect that renders this pain especially heartbreaking is how preventable it is. No individual ought to study, raise children, or battle sickness standing surrounded by cold water inside a tent. No student should fear the rain damaging their precious phone. Rain lays bare just how vulnerable survival is. It tests bodies worn down by anxiety, fatigue, and loss.

The current cold season aligns with the Christmas season that, for millions, symbolises warmth, refuge and care for the neediest. In Palestine, that {symbolism