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The clock read approximately 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. In the beginning, it was merely a soft rain, but after about 200 metres the rain suddenly grew heavier. This was expected. I stopped near a tent, rubbing my palms together to fight off the chill. A young boy had positioned himself selling sweet treats. We spoke briefly while I stood there, but his attention was elsewhere. I observed the cookies were loosely wrapped in plastic, moist from the drizzle, and I pondered if he’d find buyers before the night ended. The cold seeped into everything.

A Walk Through a City of Tents

Walking down al-Wehda Street in Gaza City, canvas structures flanked both sides of the road. No sounds of conversation came from inside them, only the sound 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 light my way. My mind continually drifted to those taking refuge within: How are they passing the time now? What thoughts fill their minds? What emotions do they hold? The cold was piercing. I envisioned children curled under soaked bedding, parents moving restlessly to keep them warm.

As I unlocked the door to my apartment, the freezing handle 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 possessing shelter when so many were exposed to the storm.

The Darkness Worsens

During the darkest hours, the storm grew stronger. Outside, makeshift covers on damaged glass sagged and flapped violently, while metal sheets broke away and crashed to the ground. Overriding the noise came the sharp, panicked screams of children, piercing the darkness. I felt totally incapable.

For the last fortnight, the rain has been unending. Cold, heavy, and driven by strong winds, it has drenched shelters, flooded makeshift camps and turned the soil into mud. Elsewhere, this might be called “inclement weather”. In Gaza, it is endured in a state of exposure and abandonment.

The Harshest Days

Palestinians know this time of year as al-Arba’iniya; the fourty most severe days of winter, beginning in late December and persisting to the end of January. It is the true beginning of winter, the moment when the season reveals its full force. Typically, it is faced with preparation and shelter. Now, Gaza has none of these. The frost seeps through homes, streets are deserted and people simply endure.

But the danger of winter 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 war-damaged building collapsed in northern Gaza, freeing five additional individuals, 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 compromised after months of bombardment and ultimately defeated by winter rain. Earlier this month, a young child in Khan Younis succumbed to exposure to the cold.

Precarious Existence

Walking past the camp nearest my home, I saw the consequences up close. Flimsy tarpaulins strained under the weight of water, mattresses were adrift and clothes hung damply, incapable of drying. Each step highlighted how fragile these shelters were and how close the rain and cold threatened life and health for a vast population living in tents and cramped refuges.

The majority of these individuals have already been uprooted, many on multiple occasions. Homes are gone. Neighbourhoods leveled. Winter has descended upon Gaza, but protection from it has not. It has come lacking adequate housing, in darkness, without heating.

Students in the Storm

As a university lecturer in Gaza, this weather weighs heavily on me. My students are not distant names; they are young people I speak to; bright, resilient, but extremely fatigued. Most attend online classes from tents; others from overcrowded shelters where privacy is impossible and connectivity unreliable. A significant number of pupils have already experienced bereavement. Most have lost their homes. Yet they still try to study. Their perseverance is astounding, but it must not be demanded in this way.

In Gaza, what would usually be routine academic practices—assignments, deadlines—turn into ethical dilemmas, shaped each day by uncertainty about students’ security, heat and access to shelter.

During nights like these, 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 residing in apartments, or the shells that are left, there is a lack of heat. With electricity mostly absent and fuel in short supply, warmth comes mostly via bundling up and using the few bedding items available. Even so, cold nights are unbearable. How then those living in tents?

The Humanitarian Shortfall

Reports indicate that over a million people in Gaza live in shelters. Aid supplies, including weatherproof shelters, have been inadequate. During the recent storm, aid organizations reported delivering plastic sheets, tents and mattresses to a multitude of people. For those affected, however, this assistance was widely experienced as inconsistent and lacking, limited to temporary solutions that were largely ineffective against prolonged exposure to cold, wind and rain. Tents collapse. Respiratory illnesses, hypothermia, and infections linked to damp conditions are increasing.

This is not an unforeseen disaster. Winter arrives cyclically. People in Gaza understand this failure not as bad luck, but as being forsaken. People speak of how critical supplies are blocked or slowed, while attempts to reinforce weakened structures are consistently hampered. Grassroots projects have tried to find solutions, to distribute plastic sheeting, yet they remain limited by bureaucratic barriers. The failure is political and humanitarian. Remedies are known, but are kept out.

A Symbolic Season

What makes this suffering especially agonizing is how avoidable it could have been. It is unconscionable to study, raise children, or battle sickness standing surrounded by cold water inside a tent. No student should fear the rain destroying their final textbook. Rain reveals just how vulnerable survival is. It strains physiques worn down by anxiety, fatigue, and loss.

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