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The clock read about 8:30 PM on a Thursday when I headed back home in Gaza City. Gusts of wind blew, making it impossible to remain any longer, so I had to walk. In the beginning, it was merely a soft rain, but after about 200 metres the rain became a downpour. This was expected. I paused beside a tent, trying to warm my hands to fight off the chill. A young boy sat nearby selling homemade cookies. We shared brief remarks during my pause, but his attention was elsewhere. I observed the cookies were poorly packaged in plastic, already soggy from the drizzle, and I pondered if he’d find buyers before the night ended. The cold seeped into everything.

A Walk Through a City of Tents

As I walked along al-Wehda Street in Gaza City, canvas structures flanked both sides of the road. There were no voices from inside them, just the noise of torrential rain and the whistle of the wind. As I hurried on, attempting to avoid the rain, I activated my mobile phone's torch to illuminate the path. My mind continually drifted to those huddled within: What occupies them now? What are they thinking? How do they feel? A severe chill gripped the air. I pictured 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 quiet but powerful reminder of the hardships endured across Gaza in these severe cold season. I entered my apartment and couldn't shake the guilt of having a roof when so many were exposed to the storm.

The Darkness Intensifies

During the darkest hours, the storm reached its peak. Outside, makeshift covers on broken panes sagged and flapped violently, while corrugated metal broke away and fell with a clatter. Cutting through the chaos came the sharp, panicked screams of children, piercing the darkness. I felt totally incapable.

Over the past two weeks, the rain has been unending. Freezing, pouring, and carried by strong winds, it has drenched shelters, swamped refugee areas and turned bare earth into mud. In other places, this might be called “inclement weather”. In Gaza, it is lived with exposure and abandonment.

The Harshest Days

Palestinians know this time of year as al-Arba’iniya; the 40 coldest and harshest days of winter, beginning in late December and continuing through the end of January. It is the real onset of winter, the moment when the season unleashes its intensity. Ordinarily, it is endured with preparation and shelter. Now, Gaza has neither. The cold bites through homes, streets are vacant and people merely survive.

But the peril of the season is now very real. On the Sunday morning before Christmas, rescue operations found the victims of two children after the roof of a war-damaged building collapsed in northern Gaza, saving five more people, including a child and two women. Two people are still unaccounted for. Such collapses are not the result of fresh strikes, but the outcome of homes weakened by months of bombardment and finally undone by winter rain. In recent days, an eight-month-old baby girl in Khan Younis died of exposure to the cold.

Fragile Shelters

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, always damp. Each step reinforced how fragile these shelters were and how close the rain and cold came to taking life and health for hundreds of thousands living in tents and packed sanctuaries.

A great number of these residents have already been forced from their homes, many on multiple occasions. Homes are destroyed. Neighbourhoods flattened. Winter has come to Gaza, but protection from it has not. It has come without proper shelter, with no power, without heating.

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 faces I recognize; smart, persistent, but deeply weary. Most attend online classes from tents; others from cramped quarters where solitude is unattainable and connectivity sporadic. Many of my students have already suffered personal loss. 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 usually be routine academic practices—assignments, deadlines—transform into moral negotiations, shaped each day by anxiety over students’ security, heat and ability to find refuge.

During nights like these, I am constantly preoccupied about them. Do they have dryness? Are they warm? Did the wind tear through their shelter during the night? 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 mostly via donning extra clothing and using any remaining covers. Nonetheless, cold nights are unbearable. How then those living in tents?

Aid and Abandonment

Agencies state that well over a million people in Gaza exist in makeshift accommodations. Humanitarian assistance, including weatherproof shelters, have been insufficient. Amid the last tempest, humanitarian partners reported delivering tarpaulins, tents and bedding to thousands of families. On the ground, however, this assistance was frequently felt to be uneven and inadequate, limited to band-aid measures that were largely ineffective against extended hardship to cold, wind and rain. Structures give way. Sicknesses, hypothermia, and infections associated with damp conditions are on the upswing.

This is not an unforeseen disaster. Winter is an annual event. People in Gaza understand this failure not as bad luck, but as abandonment. People speak of how necessary items are hindered or postponed, while attempts to repair damaged homes are consistently hampered. Grassroots projects have tried to improvise, to provide coverings, yet they remain limited by restrictions on imports. The root cause is political and humanitarian. Solutions exist, but are prevented from arriving.

An Unnecessary Pain

The factor that intensifies this hardship especially agonizing is how preventable it is. It is unconscionable to study, raise children, or fight illness standing surrounded by cold water inside a tent. No learner should dread the rain damaging their precious phone. Rain lays bare just how precarious existence is. It strains physiques worn down by anxiety, fatigue, and loss.

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