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The time was around 8:30 PM on a Thursday when I headed back home in Gaza City. The wind howled, 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 intensified abruptly. This was expected. I stopped near a tent, rubbing my palms together to draw some warmth. A young boy was sitting outside selling baked goods. We exchanged a few words during my pause, but his attention was elsewhere. I observed the cookies were poorly packaged in plastic, moist from the drizzle, and I wondered if he’d have enough to sell before the night ended. The freezing temperature invaded every space.

A Journey Through a Place of Tents

As I walked along al-Wehda Street in Gaza City, tents lined both sides of the road. There were no voices from inside them, only the sound of falling water and the roar of the wind. Quickening my pace, attempting to avoid the rain, I turned on my mobile phone's torch to illuminate the path. My mind continually drifted to those sheltering inside: What are they doing now? What is their state of mind? How do they feel? It was bitterly cold. I pictured children curled under damp covers, parents adjusting repeatedly to keep them warm.

As I unlocked the door to my apartment, the cold metal served as a understated yet stark reminder of the struggles borne across Gaza in these severe cold season. I stepped inside my apartment and couldn't shake the guilt of enjoying a dry home when countless others faced exposure to the storm.

The Night Worsens

As midnight passed, the storm intensified. Outside, plastic sheeting on broken panes sagged and flapped violently, while metal sheets ripped free and fell with a clatter. Overriding the noise came the piercing, fearful cries of children, shattering the darkness. I felt utterly powerless.

For the last fortnight, the rain has been incessant. Freezing, pouring, and carried by strong winds, it has soaked tents, inundated temporary settlements and turned open ground into mud. In different contexts, this might be called “bad weather”. In Gaza, it is lived with exposure and abandonment.

The Cruelest Season

Locals call this time of year as al-Arba’iniya; the 40 coldest and harshest days of winter, commencing 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. Typically, it is endured with preparation and shelter. Now, Gaza has none of these. The frost seeps through homes, streets are empty and people merely survive.

But the threat posed by the cold is no longer abstract. Early on the Sunday before Christmas, rescue operations found the victims of two children after the roof of a shelled home collapsed in northern Gaza, saving five more people, including a child and two women. Two people have not been found. Such collapses are not the result of fresh strikes, but the result of homes weakened by months of bombardment and succumbing to winter rain. In recent days, an eight-month-old baby girl in Khan Younis died of exposure to the cold.

Precarious Existence

Walking past the camp nearest my home, I witnessed the impact up close. Thin plastic sheets strained under the weight of water, mattresses floated and clothes hung damply, 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 a vast population living in tents and overcrowded shelters.

Most of these people have already been uprooted, many several times over. Homes are gone. Neighbourhoods razed. Winter has come to Gaza, but shelter from its fury 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 is a heavy burden. My students are not mere statistics; they are faces I recognize; bright, resilient, but extremely fatigued. Most participate in digital sessions from tents; others from cramped quarters where solitude is unattainable and connectivity intermittent. A significant number of pupils have already suffered personal loss. Most have seen their houses destroyed. Yet they persist in learning. Their resilience is extraordinary, but it should not be required in this way.

In Gaza, what would typically constitute routine academic practices—assignments, deadlines—transform into moral negotiations, dictated every moment by uncertainty about students’ well-being, comfort and proximity to protection.

During nights like these, I am constantly preoccupied about them. Is their shelter holding? Is there heat? Has the gale ripped through their shelter as they attempted to rest? For those remaining in apartments, or what remains of them, there is a lack of heat. With electricity largely unavailable and fuel in short supply, warmth comes mostly via donning extra clothing and using whatever blankets are left. Even so, 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. Aid supplies, including insulated tents, have been inadequate. During the recent storm, aid organizations reported delivering coverings, shelters and sleeping materials to a multitude of people. For those affected, however, this assistance was frequently felt to be uneven and inadequate, limited to temporary solutions that did little against extended hardship to cold, wind and rain. Tents collapse. Sicknesses, hypothermia, and infections caused by damp conditions are on the upswing.

This goes beyond an unexpected catastrophe. Winter is an annual event. People in Gaza view this crisis not as fate, but as neglect. People speak of how necessary items are restricted or delayed, while attempts to repair damaged homes are repeatedly obstructed. Grassroots projects have tried to improvise, to distribute plastic sheeting, yet they remain limited by what is allowed to enter. The failure is political and humanitarian. Solutions exist, but are kept out.

An Unnecessary Pain

The factor that intensifies this hardship especially heartbreaking is how unnecessary it should be. No individual ought to study, raise children, or battle sickness standing surrounded by cold water inside a tent. It is wrong for a pupil to worry about the rain destroying their final textbook. Rain exposes just how precarious existence is. It strains physiques worn down by anxiety, fatigue, and loss.

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