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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, forcing me inside any longer, so I had to walk. Initially, it was merely a soft rain, but a short distance later the rain intensified abruptly. It came as no shock. I stopped near a tent, trying to warm my hands to fight off the chill. A young boy was sitting outside selling sweet treats. We shared brief remarks during my pause, though he didn’t seem interested. I observed the cookies were loosely wrapped in plastic, dampened from the drizzle, and I pondered if he’d find buyers before the night ended. The cold seeped into everything.

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, merely the din of rain pouring down and the moan of the wind. Quickening my pace, attempting to avoid the rain, I activated my mobile phone's torch to light my way. I couldn't stop thinking to those sheltering inside: What are they doing now? What are they thinking? How do they feel? It was bitterly cold. I envisioned children curled under wet blankets, parents shifting constantly to keep them warm.

As I unlocked the door to my apartment, the freezing handle served as a quiet but powerful reminder of the suffering faced across Gaza in these severe cold season. I walked into my apartment and couldn't shake the guilt of enjoying a dry home when a multitude remained unprotected to the storm.

The Midnight Hour Intensifies

In the middle of the night, the storm grew stronger. Outside, makeshift covers on broken panes billowed and tore, while corrugated metal ripped free and fell with a clatter. Above it all came the sharp, panicked screams of children, piercing the darkness. I felt completely helpless.

For the last fortnight, 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. Elsewhere, this might be called “poor conditions”. In Gaza, it is lived with exposure and abandonment.

Al-Arba’iniya

Palestinians know this time of year as al-Arba’iniya; the most bitter forty days of winter, beginning in late December and persisting to the end of January. It is the definite start of winter, the moment when the season unleashes its intensity. Normally, it is faced with preparation and shelter. This year, Gaza has neither. The chill penetrates through homes, streets are deserted and people simply endure.

But the danger of winter is now very real. Early on the 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. Such collapses are not the result of fresh strikes, but the consequence of homes compromised after months of bombardment and ultimately defeated by winter rain. In recent days, an eight-month-old baby girl in Khan Younis passed away from exposure to the cold.

Precarious Existence

Passing by the camp nearest my home, I observed the results up close. Thin plastic sheets sagged under the weight of water, mattresses bobbed in water and clothes remained wet, incapable of drying. Each step reinforced 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 cramped refuges.

Most of these people have already been displaced, many several times over. Homes are destroyed. Neighbourhoods razed. Winter has arrived in Gaza, but defense against it has not. It has come without proper shelter, without electricity, lacking heat.

The Weight on Education

As a university lecturer in Gaza, this weather weighs heavily on me. My students are not distant names; they are faces I recognize; intelligent, determined, but profoundly exhausted. Most participate in digital sessions from tents; others from overcrowded shelters where personal space doesn't exist and connectivity sporadic. Many of my students have already experienced bereavement. Most have lost their homes. Yet they continue their education. Their resilience is extraordinary, but it ought not be necessary in this way.

In Gaza, what would typically constitute routine academic practices—projects, due dates—turn into questions of conscience, shaped each day by anxiety over students’ well-being, comfort and proximity to protection.

On evenings such as this, I am constantly preoccupied about them. Are they dry? Are they warm? Could the storm have shredded through their shelter while they were trying to sleep? For those residing in apartments, or what remains of them, there is no heating. With electricity mostly absent and fuel rare, warmth comes mainly from donning extra clothing and using any remaining covers. Even so, cold nights are unbearable. What, then those living in tents?

The Humanitarian Shortfall

Agencies state that well over a million people in Gaza live in shelters. Relief items, including insulated tents, have been insufficient. During the recent storm, humanitarian partners reported providing coverings, shelters and sleeping materials to a multitude of people. For those affected, however, this assistance was widely experienced as inconsistent and lacking, limited to band-aid measures that offered scant protection against prolonged exposure to cold, wind and rain. Structures give way. Respiratory illnesses, hypothermia, and infections caused by damp conditions are increasing.

This cannot be described as an unforeseen disaster. Winter is an annual event. People in Gaza view this crisis not as bad luck, but as being forsaken. People speak of how essential materials are restricted or delayed, while attempts to repair damaged homes are frequently blocked. Local initiatives have tried to find solutions, to distribute plastic sheeting, yet they remain limited by bureaucratic barriers. The culpability lies in political and humanitarian. Remedies are known, but are kept out.

A Symbolic Season

The aspect that renders this pain especially agonizing is how preventable it is. No individual ought to study, raise children, or battle sickness standing knee-high in cold water inside a tent. No learner should dread the rain destroying their final textbook. Rain lays bare just how fragile life has become. It tests bodies worn down by stress, exhaustion, and grief.

The current cold season occurs alongside the Christmas season that, for millions, epitomizes warmth, refuge and care for the disadvantaged. In Palestine, that {symbolism