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The clock read around 8:30 PM on a Thursday when I made my way home in Gaza City. Gusts of wind blew, making it impossible to remain any longer, so walking was my only option. At first, it was just a gentle sprinkle, but a short distance later the rain became a downpour. It came as no shock. I paused beside a tent, trying to warm my hands to generate a little heat. A young boy was sitting outside selling homemade cookies. We shared brief remarks as I waited, but his attention was elsewhere. I noticed the cookies were loosely wrapped in plastic, already soggy 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, makeshift shelters crowded both sides of the road. There were no voices from inside them, only the sound of rain pouring down and the roar of the wind. Quickening my pace, seeking escape from the rain, I turned on my mobile phone's torch to see the road ahead. My thoughts kept returning to those huddled within: What occupies them now? What is their state of mind? How do they feel? The cold was piercing. I pictured children nestled under damp covers, parents adjusting repeatedly to keep them warm.

Upon opening the door to my apartment, the freezing handle served as a understated yet stark reminder of the suffering faced across Gaza in these brutal winter climate. I entered my apartment and was overwhelmed by the guilt of enjoying a dry home when countless others faced exposure to the storm.

The Midnight Hour Escalates

In the middle of the night, the storm intensified. Outside, tarps on shattered windows billowed and tore, while metal sheets tore loose and crashed to the ground. Cutting through the chaos came the desperate, terrified shouts of children, cutting through the darkness. I felt utterly powerless.

Over the past two weeks, the rain has been incessant. Freezing, pouring, and carried by strong winds, it has drenched shelters, flooded makeshift camps and turned bare earth into mud. In other places, this might be called “poor conditions”. In Gaza, it is endured in a state of exposure and abandonment.

Al-Arba’iniya

Palestinians know this time of year as al-Arba’iniya; the fourty most severe days of winter, commencing in late December and persisting to the end of January. It is the true beginning of winter, the moment when the season shows its true power. Normally, it is endured with preparation and shelter. This year, Gaza has neither. The chill penetrates through homes, streets are vacant and people just persevere.

But the danger of winter is now very real. On the Sunday morning before Christmas, recovery efforts retrieved the remains of two children after the roof of a war-damaged building collapsed in northern Gaza, rescuing five others, including a child and two women. Two people have not been found. Such collapses are not the result of fresh strikes, but the consequence of homes damaged from months of bombardment and finally undone by winter rain. Earlier this month, a young child in Khan Younis passed away from exposure to the cold.

A Life in Tents

Observing the camp nearest my home, I observed the results up close. Flimsy tarpaulins buckled beneath the weight of water, mattresses were adrift and clothes hung damply, always damp. Each step reinforced how precarious these dwellings are and how close the rain and cold threatened life and health for countless individuals living in tents and cramped refuges.

Most of these people have already been uprooted, many repeatedly. Homes are destroyed. Neighbourhoods razed. Winter has descended upon Gaza, but defense against it has not. It has come lacking adequate housing, with no power, lacking heat.

The Weight on Education

In my role as a professor in Gaza, this weather weighs heavily on me. My students are not figures in a report; they are young people I speak to; intelligent, determined, but profoundly exhausted. Most attend online classes from tents; others from packed rooms 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 continue their education. Their fortitude is remarkable, but it must not be demanded in this way.

In Gaza, what would typically constitute routine academic practices—assignments, deadlines—turn into questions of conscience, influenced daily by uncertainty about students’ security, heat and access to shelter.

On evenings such as this, I am constantly preoccupied about them. Are they dry? Is there heat? Did the wind tear through their shelter while they were trying to sleep? For those still living in apartments, or the shells that are left, there is a lack of heat. With electricity scarce and fuel rare, warmth comes primarily through bundling up and using any remaining covers. Despite this, cold nights are excruciating. What, then those living in tents?

Political Failure

Figures show that over a million people in Gaza live in shelters. Humanitarian assistance, including insulated tents, have been inadequate. Amid the last tempest, humanitarian partners reported providing tarpaulins, tents and bedding to a multitude of people. For those affected, however, this assistance was widely experienced as uneven and inadequate, limited to short-term fixes that did little against prolonged exposure to cold, wind and rain. Structures give way. Sicknesses, hypothermia, and infections caused by damp conditions are on the upswing.

This is not an unforeseen disaster. Winter is an annual event. People in Gaza view this crisis not as misfortune, but as abandonment. People speak of how necessary items are blocked or slowed, while attempts to fix broken houses are frequently blocked. Grassroots projects have tried to make do, to distribute plastic sheeting, yet they are still constrained by bureaucratic barriers. The failure is political and humanitarian. Solutions exist, but are withheld.

An Unnecessary Pain

The aspect that renders this pain especially agonizing is how unnecessary it should be. No individual ought to study, raise children, or fight illness standing ankle-deep in cold water inside a tent. No learner should dread the rain damaging their precious phone. Rain exposes just how vulnerable survival is. It tests bodies worn down by stress, exhaustion, and grief.

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