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The clock read approximately 8:30 PM on a Thursday when I made my way home in Gaza City. Gusts of wind blew, and I couldn’t stay out any longer, leaving me to walk. At first, it was merely a soft rain, but following a brief walk the rain became a downpour. It came as no shock. I paused beside a tent, clapping my hands to draw some warmth. A young boy was sitting outside selling baked goods. We shared brief remarks while I stood there, but his attention was elsewhere. I observed the cookies were poorly packaged in plastic, dampened from the drizzle, and I wondered if he’d manage to sell them all before the night ended. The cold seeped into everything.

A Journey Through a Place of Tents

As I walked along al-Wehda Street in Gaza City, tents lined both sides of the road. An eerie silence replaced voices from inside them, merely the din of torrential rain and the whistle of the wind. Quickening my pace, seeking escape from the rain, I switched on my mobile phone's torch to light my way. My mind continually drifted to those huddled within: What are they doing now? What is their state of mind? What are they experiencing? The cold was piercing. I pictured children curled under soaked bedding, parents shifting constantly to keep them warm.

Upon opening 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 felt consumed by the guilt of enjoying a dry home when countless others faced exposure to the storm.

The Midnight Hour Escalates

As midnight passed, the storm grew stronger. Outside, plastic sheeting on damaged glass sagged and flapped violently, while metal sheets ripped free and slammed down. Cutting through the chaos came the piercing, fearful cries of children, shattering the darkness. I felt completely helpless.

During recent days, the rain has been unending. Cold, heavy, and driven by strong winds, it has drenched shelters, inundated temporary settlements and turned the soil into mud. Elsewhere, this might be called “poor conditions”. In Gaza, it is lived with exposure and abandonment.

Al-Arba’iniya

Residents refer to this time of year as al-Arba’iniya; the fourty most severe days of winter, starting from 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. Currently, Gaza has no such defenses. The frost seeps through homes, streets are empty and people just persevere.

But the peril of the season is no longer abstract. In the early hours of Sunday before Christmas, civil defense teams found the victims of two children after the roof of a bombarded structure collapsed in northern Gaza, freeing five additional individuals, including a child and two women. Two people remain missing. Such collapses are not the result of fresh strikes, but the consequence of homes compromised after months of bombardment and ultimately defeated by winter rain. Earlier this month, a young child in Khan Younis died of exposure to the cold.

Fragile Shelters

Passing by the camp nearest my home, I witnessed the impact up close. Thin plastic sheets sagged under the weight of water, mattresses floated and clothes were perpetually moist, always damp. Each step reminded me how vulnerable these tents are and how close the rain and cold threatened 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 lost. Neighbourhoods flattened. Winter has arrived in Gaza, but shelter from its fury has not. It has come devoid of safe refuge, without electricity, devoid of warmth.

The Weight on Education

In my role as a professor in Gaza, this weather is a heavy burden. My students are not distant names; they are individuals I know; intelligent, determined, but profoundly exhausted. Most join virtual lessons from tents; others from overcrowded shelters where personal space doesn't exist and connectivity unreliable. Many of my students 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 typically constitute routine academic practices—tasks, schedules—turn into moral negotiations, influenced daily by uncertainty about students’ well-being, comfort and ability to find refuge.

When the storm rages, 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 remaining in apartments, or the shells that are left, there is an absence of warmth. With electricity scarce and fuel scarce, warmth comes mainly from wearing multiple layers and using whatever blankets are left. Despite this, cold nights are unbearable. How then those living in tents?

Political Failure

Reports indicate that well over a million people in Gaza exist in makeshift accommodations. Relief items, including thermal blankets, have been far from enough. When the cyclone hit, aid organizations reported providing plastic sheets, tents and mattresses to numerous households. On the ground, however, this assistance was frequently felt to be uneven and inadequate, limited to temporary solutions that did little against prolonged exposure to cold, wind and rain. Structures give way. Chest infections, hypothermia, and infections linked to damp conditions are on the upswing.

This goes beyond an unexpected catastrophe. Winter comes every year. People in Gaza interpret this shortcoming 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 frequently blocked. Grassroots projects have tried to improvise, to provide coverings, yet they remain limited by restrictions on imports. The failure is political and humanitarian. Remedies are known, but are prevented from arriving.

A Preventable Suffering

What makes this suffering especially heartbreaking is how unnecessary it should be. No individual ought to study, raise children, or fight illness standing knee-high in cold water inside a tent. It is wrong for a pupil to worry about the rain ruining their last notebook. Rain lays bare just how fragile life has become. It tests bodies worn down by anxiety, fatigue, and loss.

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