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The clock read about 8:30 PM on a Thursday when I headed back home in Gaza City. A strong wind was blowing, making it impossible to remain any longer, so walking was my only option. Initially, it was only a light drizzle, but after about 200 metres the rain suddenly grew heavier. This was expected. I stopped near a tent, rubbing my palms together to fight off the chill. A young boy had positioned himself selling baked goods. We exchanged a few words as I waited, although he appeared disengaged. I saw the cookies were hastily covered in plastic, moist 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 City of Tents

While traversing al-Wehda Street in Gaza City, tents lined both sides of the road. There were no voices from inside them, merely the din of torrential rain 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 taking refuge within: What occupies them now? What are they thinking? What emotions do they hold? A severe chill gripped the air. I envisioned children nestled under soaked bedding, parents shifting constantly to keep them warm.

When I opened the door to my apartment, the freezing handle served as a quiet but powerful reminder of the hardships endured across Gaza in these severe cold season. I entered my apartment and felt consumed by the guilt of having a roof when countless others faced exposure to the storm.

The Midnight Hour Worsens

As midnight passed, the storm intensified. Outside, tarps on broken panes whipped and strained, while tin roofing ripped free and fell with a clatter. Overriding the noise came the piercing, fearful cries of children, cutting through the darkness. I felt completely helpless.

For the last fortnight, the rain has been incessant. Cold, heavy, and driven by strong winds, it has soaked tents, inundated temporary settlements and turned the soil into mud. Elsewhere, this might be called “bad weather”. In Gaza, it is endured in a state of exposure and abandonment.

The Cruelest Season

Palestinians know this time of year as al-Arba’iniya; the most bitter forty days of winter, starting from late December and lasting until the end of January. It is the real onset of winter, the moment when the season shows its true power. Ordinarily, it is weathered through preparation and shelter. Now, Gaza has neither. The cold bites through homes, streets are vacant and people just persevere.

But the peril of the season is no longer abstract. On the Sunday morning before Christmas, civil defense teams retrieved the remains of two children after the roof of a bombarded structure collapsed in northern Gaza, saving five more people, including a child and two women. Two people have not been found. Such collapses are not new attacks, but the result of homes damaged from months of bombardment and succumbing to winter rain. In recent days, an eight-month-old baby girl in Khan Younis passed away from exposure to the cold.

Fragile Shelters

Passing by the camp nearest my home, I observed the results up close. Flimsy tarpaulins buckled beneath the weight of water, mattresses were adrift and clothes were perpetually moist, incapable of drying. Each step highlighted how precarious these dwellings are and how close the rain and cold came to taking life and health for hundreds of thousands living in tents and cramped refuges.

Most of these people have already been displaced, many on multiple occasions. Homes are destroyed. Neighbourhoods flattened. Winter has arrived in Gaza, but protection from it has not. It has come lacking adequate housing, without electricity, lacking heat.

A Teacher's Anguish

As a university lecturer 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. Many of my students have already suffered personal loss. Most have seen their houses destroyed. Yet they still try to study. Their fortitude is remarkable, but it must not be demanded in this way.

In Gaza, what would typically constitute routine academic practices—tasks, schedules—become moral negotiations, dictated every moment by anxiety over students’ security, heat and ability to find refuge.

On evenings such as this, I cannot help but wonder 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 a lack of heat. With electricity largely unavailable and fuel scarce, warmth comes mostly via donning extra clothing and using any remaining covers. Despite this, cold nights are intolerable. What, then those living in tents?

Political Failure

Agencies state that well over a million people in Gaza reside in temporary housing. Relief items, including insulated tents, have been insufficient. When the cyclone hit, humanitarian partners reported delivering tarpaulins, tents and bedding to numerous households. On the ground, however, this assistance was widely experienced as patchy and insufficient, limited to short-term fixes that offered scant protection against prolonged exposure to cold, wind and rain. Tents collapse. Chest infections, hypothermia, and infections linked to damp conditions are increasing.

This cannot be described as an surprise calamity. Winter is an annual event. People in Gaza view this crisis not as fate, but as abandonment. People speak of how necessary items are blocked or slowed, while attempts to repair damaged homes are repeatedly obstructed. Grassroots projects have tried to find solutions, to hand out tarps, yet they continue to be hampered by bureaucratic barriers. The culpability lies in political and humanitarian. Remedies are known, but are kept out.

An Unnecessary Pain

What makes this suffering especially heartbreaking is how preventable it is. No one should have to study, raise children, or fight illness standing surrounded by cold water inside a tent. It is wrong for a pupil to worry about the rain destroying their final textbook. Rain reveals just how vulnerable survival is. It challenges health worn down by anxiety, fatigue, and loss.

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