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It was around 8:30 PM on a Thursday when I headed back home in Gaza City. The wind howled, forcing me inside any longer, so walking was my only option. In the beginning, it was only a light drizzle, but after about 200 metres the rain became a downpour. This was expected. I paused beside a tent, rubbing my palms together to fight off the chill. A young boy had positioned himself selling homemade cookies. We exchanged a few words during my pause, though he didn’t seem interested. I noticed the cookies were poorly packaged in plastic, moist from the drizzle, and I pondered if he’d have enough to sell before the night ended. The cold seeped into everything.

A Journey Through a Landscape 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 torrential rain and the moan of the wind. Quickening my pace, attempting to avoid the rain, I switched on my mobile phone's torch to illuminate the path. I couldn't stop thinking to those taking refuge within: What are they doing now? What is their state of mind? What are they experiencing? It was bitterly cold. I pictured children curled under damp covers, 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 was overwhelmed by the guilt of enjoying a dry home when so many were exposed to the storm.

The Night Worsens

In the middle of the night, the storm grew stronger. Outside, plastic sheeting on broken panes sagged and flapped violently, while metal sheets tore loose and fell with a clatter. Overriding the noise came the sharp, panicked screams of children, shattering the darkness. I felt totally incapable.

Over the past two weeks, the rain has been incessant. Freezing, pouring, and carried by strong winds, it has flooded makeshift homes, flooded makeshift camps and turned bare earth into mud. In different contexts, this might be called “bad weather”. In Gaza, it is lived with 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 lasting until the end of January. It is the true beginning of winter, the moment when the season shows its true power. Typically, it is endured with preparation and shelter. Currently, Gaza has neither. The chill penetrates through homes, streets are deserted and people simply endure.

But the peril of the season is no longer abstract. Early on the Sunday before Christmas, recovery efforts retrieved the remains of two children after the roof of a bombarded structure collapsed in northern Gaza, rescuing five others, including a child and two women. Two people are still unaccounted for. These incidents are not the result of fresh strikes, but the consequence of homes weakened by months of bombardment and succumbing to winter rain. Earlier this month, an eight-month-old baby girl in Khan Younis passed away from exposure to the cold.

Fragile Shelters

Observing the camp nearest my home, I saw the consequences up close. Inadequate coverings buckled beneath the weight of water, mattresses were adrift and clothes remained wet, 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.

The majority of these individuals have already been uprooted, many several times over. Homes are lost. Neighbourhoods leveled. Winter has come to Gaza, but protection from it has not. It has come without proper shelter, without electricity, devoid of warmth.

Students in the Storm

In my role as a professor in Gaza, this weather causes deep concern. My students are not distant names; they are individuals I know; bright, resilient, but deeply weary. Most join virtual lessons from tents; others from packed rooms where solitude is unattainable and connectivity intermittent. Countless learners have already lost family members. Most have seen their houses destroyed. Yet they persist in learning. Their perseverance is astounding, but it must not be demanded in this way.

In Gaza, what would usually be routine academic practices—assignments, deadlines—transform into questions of conscience, influenced daily by uncertainty about students’ security, heat and proximity to protection.

During nights like these, I cannot help but wonder about them. Do they have dryness? Is there heat? Did the wind tear 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 mostly absent and fuel rare, warmth comes mainly from donning extra clothing and using the few bedding items available. Despite this, cold nights are unbearable. How then those living in tents?

The Humanitarian Shortfall

Figures show that well over a million people in Gaza reside in temporary housing. Aid supplies, including insulated tents, have been far from enough. Amid the last tempest, humanitarian partners reported providing plastic sheets, tents and mattresses to a multitude of people. For those affected, however, this assistance was often perceived as patchy and insufficient, limited to temporary solutions that did little against extended hardship to cold, wind and rain. Shelters fail. Sicknesses, hypothermia, and infections associated with damp conditions are rising.

This is not an surprise calamity. Winter is an annual event. 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 fix broken houses are frequently blocked. Grassroots projects 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 withheld.

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 battle sickness standing knee-high in cold water inside a tent. No student should fear the rain destroying their final textbook. Rain exposes just how vulnerable survival is. It tests bodies worn down by stress, exhaustion, and grief.

This year's chill aligns with the Christmas season that, for millions, epitomizes warmth, refuge and care for the disadvantaged. In Palestine, that {symbolism