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The time was around 8:30 PM on a weekday evening when I returned home in Gaza City. Gusts of wind blew, forcing me inside any longer, so I had to walk. In the beginning, it was merely a soft rain, but following a brief walk the rain suddenly grew heavier. That wasn’t surprising. I paused beside a tent, trying to warm my hands to generate a little heat. A young boy sat nearby selling homemade cookies. We exchanged a few words while I stood there, though he didn’t seem interested. I saw the cookies were hastily covered in plastic, already soggy from the drizzle, and I pondered if he’d manage to sell them all before the night ended. A deep chill permeated the air.

A Journey Through a Landscape 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 rain pouring down and the moan of the wind. As I hurried on, attempting to avoid the rain, I turned on my mobile phone's torch to light my way. I couldn't stop thinking to those taking refuge within: How are they passing the time now? What are they thinking? How do they feel? It was bitterly cold. I pictured children curled under soaked bedding, parents adjusting repeatedly to keep them warm.

Upon opening the door to my apartment, the freezing handle served as a understated yet stark reminder of the suffering faced across Gaza in these brutal winter climate. I entered my apartment and couldn't shake the guilt of having a roof when so many were exposed to the storm.

The Night Worsens

In the middle of the night, the storm reached its peak. Outside, plastic sheeting on shattered windows sagged and flapped violently, while metal sheets ripped free and crashed to the ground. Above it all came the piercing, fearful cries of children, piercing the darkness. I felt totally incapable.

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

Al-Arba’iniya

Palestinians know this time of year as al-Arba’iniya; the 40 coldest and harshest days of winter, starting from late December and lasting until the end of January. It is the true beginning of winter, the moment when the season unleashes its intensity. Normally, it is endured with preparation and shelter. Currently, Gaza has none of these. The cold bites through homes, streets are vacant and people just persevere.

But the threat posed by the cold is far from theoretical. Early on the Sunday before Christmas, civil defense teams 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 new attacks, but the result 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.

A Life in Tents

Walking past the camp nearest my home, I saw the consequences up close. Thin plastic sheets strained under the weight of water, mattresses bobbed in water and clothes were perpetually moist, always damp. Each step reinforced how fragile these shelters were and how close the rain and cold came to taking life and health for countless individuals living in tents and cramped refuges.

Most of these people have already been uprooted, many several times over. Homes are destroyed. Neighbourhoods flattened. Winter has come to Gaza, but protection from it has not. It has come lacking adequate housing, without electricity, devoid of warmth.

The Weight on Education

In my role as a professor in Gaza, this weather weighs heavily on me. My students are not distant names; they are faces I recognize; smart, persistent, but profoundly exhausted. Most attend online classes from tents; others from cramped quarters where privacy is impossible and connectivity sporadic. A significant number of pupils have already experienced bereavement. Most have been rendered homeless. Yet they persist in learning. Their resilience is extraordinary, but it ought not be necessary in this way.

In Gaza, what would normally count as routine academic practices—projects, due dates—transform into questions of conscience, dictated every moment by anxiety over students’ safety, warmth and access to shelter.

On evenings such as this, I find myself thinking about them. Do they have dryness? Is there heat? Could the storm have shredded through their shelter while they were trying to sleep? For those residing in apartments, or the shells that are left, there is an absence of warmth. With electricity largely unavailable and fuel rare, warmth comes mainly from bundling up and using any remaining covers. Nonetheless, cold nights are excruciating. How then those living in tents?

Aid and Abandonment

Reports indicate that well over a million people in Gaza live in shelters. Aid supplies, including thermal blankets, have been insufficient. When the cyclone hit, relief groups reported delivering tarpaulins, tents and bedding to thousands of families. On the ground, however, this assistance was widely experienced as uneven and inadequate, limited to temporary solutions that did little against ongoing suffering to cold, wind and rain. Tents collapse. Sicknesses, hypothermia, and infections linked to damp conditions are rising.

This is not an surprise calamity. Winter arrives cyclically. People in Gaza understand this failure not as bad luck, but as being forsaken. People speak of how necessary items are blocked or slowed, while attempts to reinforce weakened structures are repeatedly obstructed. Community efforts have tried to find solutions, to distribute plastic sheeting, yet they are still constrained by bureaucratic barriers. The culpability lies in political and humanitarian. Solutions exist, but are kept out.

A Symbolic Season

What makes this suffering especially agonizing is how avoidable it could have been. No one should have to study, raise children, or combat disease standing surrounded by cold water inside a tent. No student should fear the rain ruining their last notebook. Rain lays bare just how vulnerable survival 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