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It was approximately 8:30 PM on a weekday evening when I made my way home in Gaza City. A strong wind was blowing, and I couldn’t stay out any longer, so walking was my only option. In the beginning, it was just a gentle sprinkle, but a short distance later the rain intensified abruptly. This was expected. I took shelter by a tent, clapping my hands to fight off the chill. A young boy sat nearby selling homemade cookies. We exchanged a few words as I waited, though he didn’t seem interested. I noticed the cookies were hastily covered in plastic, moist from the drizzle, and I pondered if he’d find buyers before the night ended. The cold seeped into everything.

A Journey 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, merely the din of falling water and the roar of the wind. Quickening my pace, trying to dodge the rain, I activated my mobile phone's torch to see the road ahead. My thoughts kept returning to those sheltering inside: What occupies them now? What are they thinking? What emotions do they hold? It was bitterly cold. I imagined children nestled under wet blankets, parents shifting constantly to keep them warm.

Upon opening the door to my apartment, the icy doorknob served as a subtle yet haunting reminder of the hardships endured across Gaza in these harsh winter conditions. I walked into my apartment and couldn't shake the guilt of enjoying a dry home when a multitude remained unprotected to the storm.

The Night Worsens

In the middle of the night, the storm grew stronger. Outside, plastic sheeting on shattered windows sagged and flapped violently, while corrugated metal broke away and slammed down. 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 relentless. Freezing, pouring, and carried by strong winds, it has soaked tents, swamped refugee areas and turned the soil into mud. Elsewhere, this might be called “poor conditions”. In Gaza, it is experienced amidst exposure and abandonment.

The Cruelest Season

Locals call this time of year as al-Arba’iniya; the most bitter forty days of winter, beginning in late December and continuing through the end of January. It is the definite start of winter, the moment when the season shows its true power. Normally, it is weathered through preparation and shelter. This year, Gaza has neither. The cold bites through homes, streets are deserted and people merely survive.

But the threat posed by the cold is far from theoretical. In the early hours of Sunday before Christmas, rescue operations recovered the bodies 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 remain missing. These structural failures are not the result of fresh strikes, but the consequence of homes damaged from months of bombardment and succumbing to winter rain. In recent days, an infant in Khan Younis died of exposure to the cold.

A Life in Tents

Passing by the camp nearest my home, I saw the consequences up close. Flimsy tarpaulins sagged under the weight of water, mattresses bobbed in water and clothes hung damply, never fully drying. Each step highlighted 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.

A great number of these residents have already been displaced, many on multiple occasions. Homes are destroyed. Neighbourhoods razed. Winter has arrived in Gaza, but protection from it has not. It has come devoid of safe refuge, with no power, devoid of warmth.

Students in the Storm

Being an educator in Gaza, this weather is a heavy burden. My students are not figures in a report; they are faces I recognize; bright, resilient, but profoundly exhausted. Most participate in digital sessions from tents; others from cramped quarters where privacy is impossible and connectivity unreliable. Many of my students have already suffered personal loss. Most have been rendered homeless. Yet they still try to study. Their fortitude is remarkable, but it must not be demanded in this way.

In Gaza, what would normally count as routine academic practices—projects, due dates—become moral negotiations, shaped each day by concern for students’ safety, warmth and proximity to protection.

When the storm rages, I am constantly preoccupied about them. Do they have dryness? Do they feel any warmth? Could the storm have shredded through their shelter as they attempted to rest? For those still living in apartments, or damaged structures, there is a lack of heat. With electricity scarce and fuel rare, warmth comes primarily through wearing multiple layers and using any remaining covers. Nonetheless, cold nights are unbearable. What, then those living in tents?

Political Failure

Agencies state that more than a million people in Gaza exist in makeshift accommodations. Aid supplies, including thermal blankets, have been inadequate. Amid the last tempest, relief groups reported distributing plastic sheets, tents and mattresses to thousands of families. For those affected, however, this assistance was widely experienced as uneven and inadequate, limited to short-term fixes that were largely ineffective against prolonged exposure to cold, wind and rain. Tents collapse. Sicknesses, hypothermia, and infections caused by damp conditions are increasing.

This cannot be described as an surprise calamity. Winter comes every year. People in Gaza view this crisis not as misfortune, but as neglect. People speak of how necessary items are blocked or slowed, while attempts to fix broken houses are frequently blocked. Community efforts have tried to improvise, to provide coverings, yet they continue to be hampered by bureaucratic barriers. The culpability lies in political and humanitarian. Solutions exist, but are prevented from arriving.

A Symbolic Season

The factor that intensifies this hardship especially heartbreaking is how avoidable it could have been. No one should have to study, raise children, or combat disease standing knee-high in cold water inside a tent. No learner should dread the rain destroying their final textbook. Rain exposes just how precarious existence is. It challenges health worn down by pressure, weariness, and sorrow.

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