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The clock read around 8:30 PM on a weekday evening when I returned home in Gaza City. Gusts of wind blew, making it impossible to remain any longer, leaving me to walk. Initially, it was merely a soft rain, but a short distance later the rain intensified abruptly. It came as no shock. I paused beside a tent, rubbing my palms together to fight off the chill. A young boy sat nearby selling baked goods. We exchanged a few words during my pause, but his attention was elsewhere. I saw the cookies were poorly packaged in plastic, dampened from the drizzle, and I wondered if he’d have enough to sell before the night ended. A deep chill permeated the air.

A Walk Through a Landscape of Tents

While traversing al-Wehda Street in Gaza City, makeshift shelters crowded both sides of the road. An eerie silence replaced voices from inside them, just the noise of rain pouring down and the roar of the wind. Quickening my pace, trying to dodge the rain, I switched on my mobile phone's torch to see the road ahead. My thoughts kept returning to those huddled within: What occupies them now? What are they thinking? What are they experiencing? A severe chill gripped the air. I pictured children curled under wet blankets, parents shifting constantly to keep them warm.

When I opened the door to my apartment, the cold metal served as a quiet but powerful reminder of the struggles borne across Gaza in these severe cold season. I stepped inside my apartment and was overwhelmed by the guilt of enjoying a dry home when so many were exposed to the storm.

The Midnight Hour Worsens

In the middle of the night, the storm intensified. Outside, makeshift covers on broken panes sagged and flapped violently, while corrugated metal ripped free and slammed down. Overriding the noise came the sharp, panicked screams of children, shattering the darkness. I felt utterly powerless.

During recent days, the rain has been incessant. Cold, heavy, and driven by strong winds, it has drenched shelters, inundated temporary settlements and turned the soil into mud. In other places, this might be called “poor conditions”. In Gaza, it is endured in a state of exposure and abandonment.

The Harshest Days

Palestinians know 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 true beginning of winter, the moment when the season reveals its full force. Ordinarily, it is endured with preparation and shelter. This year, Gaza has neither. The frost seeps through homes, streets are empty and people merely survive.

But the threat posed by the cold is far from theoretical. In the early hours of Sunday before Christmas, recovery efforts found the victims 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 are still unaccounted for. These incidents are not caused by ongoing hostilities, but the result of homes compromised after months of bombardment and ultimately defeated by winter rain. Not long ago, an infant in Khan Younis succumbed to 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 were adrift and clothes hung damply, incapable of drying. Each step highlighted how fragile these shelters were and how close the rain and cold came to taking life and health for a vast population living in tents and packed sanctuaries.

The majority of these individuals have already been uprooted, many on multiple occasions. Homes are destroyed. Neighbourhoods leveled. Winter has descended upon Gaza, but defense against it has not. It has come devoid of safe refuge, with no power, lacking heat.

A Teacher's Anguish

In my role as a professor in Gaza, this weather is a heavy burden. My students are not figures in a report; they are faces I recognize; bright, resilient, but extremely fatigued. Most join virtual lessons from tents; others from cramped quarters where privacy is impossible and connectivity intermittent. Many of my students have already experienced bereavement. Most have seen their houses destroyed. Yet they persist in learning. Their resilience is extraordinary, but it ought not be necessary in this way.

In Gaza, what would usually be routine academic practices—assignments, deadlines—turn into moral negotiations, influenced daily by concern for students’ safety, warmth and proximity to protection.

On evenings such as this, I find myself thinking about them. Are they dry? Is there heat? Did the wind tear through their shelter as they attempted to rest? For those remaining in apartments, or the shells that are left, there is an absence of warmth. With electricity largely unavailable and fuel in short supply, warmth comes mostly via wearing multiple layers and using whatever blankets are left. Even so, cold nights are excruciating. What, then those living in tents?

The Humanitarian Shortfall

Reports indicate that well over a million people in Gaza reside in temporary housing. Relief items, including thermal blankets, have been inadequate. When the cyclone hit, aid organizations reported providing plastic sheets, tents and mattresses to numerous households. In reality, however, this assistance was frequently felt to be uneven and inadequate, limited to band-aid measures that did little against extended hardship to cold, wind and rain. Tents collapse. Chest infections, hypothermia, and infections caused by damp conditions are on the upswing.

This is not an unforeseen disaster. Winter arrives cyclically. People in Gaza view this crisis not as fate, but as being forsaken. People speak of how critical supplies are restricted or delayed, while attempts to repair damaged homes are consistently hampered. Local initiatives have tried to improvise, to hand out tarps, yet they continue to be hampered by what is allowed to enter. The root cause is political and humanitarian. Answers are available, but are prevented from arriving.

A Preventable Suffering

The factor that intensifies this hardship especially painful is how preventable it is. No one should have to study, raise children, or battle sickness standing knee-high in cold water inside a tent. It is wrong for a pupil to worry about the rain destroying their final textbook. Rain lays bare just how precarious existence is. It strains physiques worn down by anxiety, fatigue, and loss.

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