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The time was around 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 generate a little heat. A young boy was sitting outside selling homemade cookies. We exchanged a few words during my pause, but his attention was elsewhere. I saw the cookies were hastily covered in plastic, dampened from the drizzle, and I questioned if he’d manage to sell them all before the night ended. A deep chill permeated the air.

A Walk Through a Place of Tents

While traversing al-Wehda Street in Gaza City, tents lined 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, seeking escape from the rain, I switched on my mobile phone's torch to see the road ahead. My mind continually drifted to those sheltering inside: How are they passing the time now? What are they thinking? What are they experiencing? A severe chill gripped the air. I envisioned children curled under soaked bedding, 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 struggles borne across Gaza in these harsh winter conditions. I entered my apartment and was overwhelmed by the guilt of possessing shelter when so many were exposed to the storm.

The Night Escalates

As midnight passed, the storm reached its peak. Outside, makeshift covers on damaged glass billowed and tore, while corrugated metal tore loose and fell with a clatter. Above it all came the desperate, terrified shouts of children, cutting through the darkness. I felt totally incapable.

For the last fortnight, the rain has been unending. Cold, heavy, and driven by strong winds, it has soaked tents, flooded makeshift camps and turned the soil into mud. In other places, this might be called “inclement weather”. In Gaza, it is lived with exposure and abandonment.

The Cruelest Season

Locals call this time of year as al-Arba’iniya; the fourty most severe days of winter, starting from late December and persisting to the end of January. It is the true beginning of winter, the moment when the season shows its true power. Ordinarily, it is faced with preparation and shelter. This year, Gaza has neither. The frost seeps through homes, streets are empty and people simply endure.

But the threat posed by the cold is far from theoretical. In the early hours of Sunday before Christmas, recovery efforts retrieved the remains of two children after the roof of a shelled home collapsed in northern Gaza, rescuing five others, including a child and two women. Two people are still unaccounted for. These structural failures are not the result of fresh strikes, but the consequence of homes damaged from months of bombardment and ultimately defeated by winter rain. Not long ago, a young child in Khan Younis passed away from exposure to the cold.

Fragile Shelters

Passing by the camp nearest my home, I witnessed the impact up close. Inadequate coverings sagged under the weight of water, mattresses were adrift and clothes remained wet, always damp. Each step reminded me 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 overcrowded shelters.

Most of these people have already been forced from their homes, many several times over. Homes are gone. Neighbourhoods flattened. Winter has descended upon Gaza, but shelter from its fury has not. It has come without proper shelter, without electricity, without heating.

The Weight on Education

In my role as a professor in Gaza, this weather causes deep concern. My students are not distant names; they are young people I speak to; smart, persistent, but deeply weary. Most attend online classes from tents; others from packed rooms where solitude is unattainable and connectivity unreliable. A significant number of pupils have already lost family members. Most have been rendered homeless. Yet they still try to study. Their resilience is extraordinary, but it should not be required in this way.

In Gaza, what would usually be routine academic practices—tasks, schedules—become questions of conscience, shaped each day by concern for students’ security, heat and ability to find refuge.

On evenings such as this, I cannot help but wonder about them. Are they dry? Is there heat? Could the storm have shredded through their shelter during the night? For those remaining in apartments, or the shells that are left, there is a lack of heat. With electricity scarce and fuel rare, warmth comes mainly from wearing multiple layers and using the few bedding items available. Nonetheless, cold nights are unbearable. What about those living in tents?

Political Failure

Agencies state that over a million people in Gaza reside in temporary housing. Relief items, including weatherproof shelters, have been insufficient. Amid the last tempest, humanitarian partners reported distributing coverings, shelters and sleeping materials to a multitude of people. On the ground, however, this assistance was widely experienced as patchy and insufficient, limited to band-aid measures that offered scant protection against ongoing suffering to cold, wind and rain. Shelters fail. Chest infections, hypothermia, and infections caused by damp conditions are increasing.

This is not an unforeseen disaster. Winter arrives cyclically. People in Gaza view this crisis not as fate, but as neglect. People speak of how essential materials are hindered or postponed, while attempts to repair damaged homes are consistently hampered. Local initiatives have tried to find solutions, to distribute plastic sheeting, yet they are still constrained by restrictions on imports. The failure is political and humanitarian. Solutions exist, but are prevented from arriving.

A Preventable Suffering

What makes this suffering especially agonizing is how unnecessary it should be. It is unconscionable to study, raise children, or combat disease 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 stress, exhaustion, and grief.

The current cold season aligns with the Christmas season that, for millions, represents warmth, refuge and care for the disadvantaged. In Palestine, that {symbolism