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It was around 8:30 PM on a weekday evening when I made my way home in Gaza City. A strong wind was blowing, making it impossible to remain any longer, so walking was my only option. 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, trying to warm my hands to draw some warmth. A young boy was sitting outside selling sweet treats. We exchanged a few words during my pause, but his attention was elsewhere. I noticed the cookies were poorly packaged in plastic, already soggy from the drizzle, and I pondered if he’d manage to sell them all before the night ended. The freezing temperature invaded every space.

A Journey Through a Landscape of Tents

Walking down al-Wehda Street in Gaza City, canvas structures flanked both sides of the road. No sounds of conversation came from inside them, merely the din of falling water and the roar of the wind. Rushing forward, seeking escape from the rain, I turned on my mobile phone's torch to see the road ahead. My thoughts kept returning to those sheltering inside: What are they doing now? What is their state of mind? What emotions do they hold? The cold was piercing. I envisioned children huddled under damp covers, parents shifting constantly to keep them warm.

Upon opening the door to my apartment, the icy doorknob served as a understated yet stark reminder of the hardships endured across Gaza in these brutal winter climate. I stepped inside my apartment and felt consumed by the guilt of having a roof when so many were exposed to the storm.

The Night Escalates

During the darkest hours, the storm grew stronger. Outside, tarps on damaged glass whipped and strained, while tin roofing broke away and slammed down. Above it all came the desperate, terrified shouts of children, cutting through the darkness. I felt totally incapable.

During recent days, the rain has been unending. Freezing, pouring, and carried by strong winds, it has drenched shelters, flooded makeshift camps and turned open ground into mud. In other places, this might be called “poor conditions”. In Gaza, it is endured in a state of exposure and abandonment.

Al-Arba’iniya

Locals call this time of year as al-Arba’iniya; the most bitter forty days of winter, commencing in late December and lasting until the end of January. It is the real onset of winter, the moment when the season unleashes its intensity. Typically, it is faced with preparation and shelter. Now, Gaza has no such defenses. The cold bites through homes, streets are vacant and people merely survive.

But the threat posed by the cold is far from theoretical. Early on the Sunday before Christmas, rescue operations retrieved the remains of two children after the roof of a shelled home collapsed in northern Gaza, saving five more people, including a child and two women. Two people are still unaccounted for. These structural failures are not new attacks, but the outcome of homes damaged from months of bombardment and finally undone by winter rain. Earlier this month, an infant in Khan Younis died of exposure to the cold.

Fragile Shelters

Walking past the camp nearest my home, I observed the results up close. Thin plastic sheets buckled beneath the weight of water, mattresses floated and clothes were perpetually moist, incapable of drying. Each step reminded me how precarious these dwellings are and how close the rain and cold came to taking life and health for a vast population living in tents and overcrowded shelters.

Most of these people have already been uprooted, many several times over. Homes are gone. Neighbourhoods flattened. Winter has arrived in Gaza, but protection from it has not. It has come lacking adequate housing, without electricity, lacking heat.

The Weight on Education

In my role as a professor in Gaza, this weather is a heavy burden. My students are not figures in a report; they are young people I speak to; smart, persistent, but profoundly exhausted. Most join virtual lessons from tents; others from packed rooms where privacy is impossible and connectivity intermittent. Many of my students have already lost family members. Most have seen their houses destroyed. Yet they continue their education. Their fortitude is remarkable, but it must not be demanded in this way.

In Gaza, what would typically constitute routine academic practices—assignments, deadlines—become questions of conscience, shaped each day by uncertainty about students’ safety, warmth and access to shelter.

On evenings such as this, I find myself thinking about them. Is their shelter holding? Do they feel any warmth? Has the gale ripped through their shelter while they were trying to sleep? For those still living in apartments, or the shells that are left, there is an absence of warmth. With electricity scarce and fuel in short supply, warmth comes mainly from bundling up and using whatever blankets are left. Even so, cold nights are unbearable. What, then those living in tents?

Aid and Abandonment

Figures show that more than a million people in Gaza reside in temporary housing. Relief items, including thermal blankets, have been inadequate. During the recent storm, humanitarian partners reported providing coverings, shelters and sleeping materials to thousands of families. On the ground, however, this assistance was widely experienced as inconsistent and lacking, limited to short-term fixes that did little against prolonged exposure to cold, wind and rain. Shelters fail. Sicknesses, hypothermia, and infections linked to damp conditions are on the upswing.

This is not an unforeseen disaster. Winter comes every year. People in Gaza understand this failure not as bad luck, but as being forsaken. People speak of how critical supplies are blocked or slowed, while attempts to reinforce weakened structures are frequently blocked. Local initiatives have tried to improvise, to hand out tarps, yet they continue to be hampered by restrictions on imports. The culpability lies in political and humanitarian. Solutions exist, but are kept out.

A Preventable Suffering

What makes this suffering especially painful is how avoidable it could have been. No individual ought to study, raise children, or fight illness standing knee-high in cold water inside a tent. No learner should dread the rain destroying their final textbook. Rain reveals just how fragile life has become. It strains physiques worn down by pressure, weariness, and sorrow.

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