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The time was about 8:30 PM on a weekday evening when I headed back home in Gaza City. A strong wind was blowing, and I couldn’t stay out any longer, leaving me to walk. At first, it was merely a soft rain, but after about 200 metres the rain became a downpour. It came as no shock. I paused beside a tent, trying to warm my hands to draw some warmth. A young boy sat nearby selling sweet treats. We spoke briefly while I stood there, but his attention was elsewhere. I observed the cookies were hastily covered in plastic, moist from the drizzle, and I pondered if he’d have enough to sell 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, makeshift shelters crowded both sides of the road. No sounds of conversation came from inside them, merely the din of torrential rain and the whistle of the wind. Rushing forward, trying to dodge the rain, I turned on my mobile phone's torch to illuminate the path. My thoughts kept returning to those taking refuge within: What are they doing now? What is their state of mind? How do they feel? It was bitterly cold. I imagined children nestled under wet blankets, parents adjusting repeatedly to keep them warm.

Upon opening the door to my apartment, the freezing handle served as a quiet but powerful reminder of the hardships endured across Gaza in these brutal winter climate. I entered my apartment and couldn't shake the guilt of possessing shelter when a multitude remained unprotected to the storm.

The Darkness Intensifies

As midnight passed, the storm grew stronger. Outside, tarps on broken panes billowed and tore, while tin roofing broke away and crashed to the ground. Cutting through the chaos came the piercing, fearful cries of children, shattering the darkness. I felt totally incapable.

Over the past two weeks, the rain has been relentless. Freezing, pouring, and carried by strong winds, it has drenched shelters, inundated temporary settlements and turned open ground into mud. Elsewhere, this might be called “inclement weather”. In Gaza, it is experienced amidst exposure and abandonment.

The Cruelest Season

Residents refer to 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 shows its true power. Typically, it is faced with preparation and shelter. This year, Gaza has neither. The frost seeps through homes, streets are vacant and people simply endure.

But the danger of winter is now very real. In the early hours of Sunday before Christmas, rescue operations 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 have not been found. These structural failures are not new attacks, but the outcome of homes weakened by months of bombardment and ultimately defeated by winter rain. In recent days, a young child in Khan Younis died of exposure to the cold.

A Life in Tents

Passing by the camp nearest my home, I observed the results up close. Thin plastic sheets strained under the weight of water, mattresses floated and clothes were perpetually moist, incapable of drying. Each step reminded me 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 cramped refuges.

A great number of these residents have already been forced from their homes, many repeatedly. Homes are lost. Neighbourhoods flattened. Winter has descended upon Gaza, but protection from it has not. It has come devoid of safe refuge, with no power, without heating.

The Weight on Education

In my role as a professor in Gaza, this weather weighs heavily on me. My students are not mere statistics; they are young people I speak to; smart, persistent, but deeply weary. Most attend online classes from tents; others from cramped quarters where privacy is impossible and connectivity sporadic. A significant number of pupils have already suffered personal loss. Most have been rendered homeless. Yet they still try to study. Their fortitude is remarkable, but it should not be required in this way.

In Gaza, what would typically constitute routine academic practices—tasks, schedules—become questions of conscience, shaped each day by concern for students’ security, heat and access to shelter.

During nights like these, I cannot help but wonder about them. Is their shelter holding? Is there heat? Has the gale ripped through their shelter while they were trying to sleep? For those remaining in apartments, or damaged structures, there is an absence of warmth. With electricity largely unavailable and fuel rare, warmth comes mostly via donning extra clothing and using the few bedding items available. Despite this, cold nights are intolerable. What, then those living in tents?

Political Failure

Figures show that over a million people in Gaza reside in temporary housing. Aid supplies, including insulated tents, have been inadequate. When the cyclone hit, relief groups reported distributing plastic sheets, tents and mattresses to a multitude of people. In reality, however, this assistance was often perceived as patchy and insufficient, limited to temporary solutions that offered scant protection against ongoing suffering to cold, wind and rain. Shelters fail. Respiratory illnesses, hypothermia, and infections linked to damp conditions are rising.

This cannot be described as an surprise calamity. Winter comes every year. People in Gaza understand this failure not as bad luck, but as being forsaken. People speak of how essential materials are blocked or slowed, while attempts to reinforce weakened structures are consistently hampered. Grassroots projects have tried to make do, to provide coverings, yet they are still constrained by what is allowed to enter. The culpability lies in political and humanitarian. Solutions exist, but are prevented from arriving.

An Unnecessary Pain

The aspect that renders this pain especially agonizing is how preventable it is. No one should have to study, raise children, or fight illness 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 pressure, weariness, and sorrow.

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