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It was around 8:30 PM on a weekday evening when I returned home in Gaza City. A strong wind was blowing, and I couldn’t stay out any longer, so walking was my only option. At first, it was only a light drizzle, but after about 200 metres the rain suddenly grew heavier. It came as no shock. I stopped near a tent, clapping my hands to draw some warmth. A young boy had positioned himself selling sweet treats. We spoke briefly during my pause, though he didn’t seem interested. I observed the cookies were hastily covered in plastic, already soggy from the drizzle, and I questioned if he’d manage to sell them all before the night ended. The cold seeped into everything.

A Journey Through a Landscape of Tents

As I walked along al-Wehda Street in Gaza City, makeshift shelters crowded both sides of the road. An eerie silence replaced voices from inside them, just the noise 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 see the road ahead. My mind continually drifted to those sheltering inside: How are they passing the time now? What thoughts fill their minds? What are they experiencing? The cold was piercing. I pictured children nestled under damp covers, parents moving restlessly to keep them warm.

Upon opening the door to my apartment, the cold metal served as a understated yet stark reminder of the suffering faced across Gaza in these severe cold season. I walked into my apartment and was overwhelmed by the guilt of enjoying a dry home when a multitude remained unprotected to the storm.

The Midnight Hour Escalates

In the middle of the night, the storm intensified. Outside, makeshift covers on shattered windows whipped and strained, while corrugated metal ripped free and slammed down. Overriding the noise came the desperate, terrified shouts of children, cutting through the darkness. I felt totally incapable.

For the last fortnight, the rain has been relentless. Freezing, pouring, and carried by strong winds, it has drenched shelters, flooded makeshift camps 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 most bitter forty 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. Normally, it is weathered through preparation and shelter. Currently, Gaza has neither. The frost seeps through homes, streets are deserted and people just persevere.

But the peril of the season is no longer abstract. In the early hours of Sunday before Christmas, recovery efforts recovered the bodies of two children after the roof of a shelled home collapsed in northern Gaza, freeing five additional individuals, including a child and two women. Two people have not been found. These incidents are not caused by ongoing hostilities, but the result of homes weakened by months of bombardment and ultimately defeated by winter rain. In recent days, an infant in Khan Younis died of exposure to the cold.

Precarious Existence

Observing the camp nearest my home, I observed the results up close. Inadequate coverings sagged under the weight of water, mattresses floated and clothes remained wet, never fully drying. Each step reinforced how fragile these shelters were and how close the rain and cold came to claiming life and health for a vast population living in tents and packed sanctuaries.

The majority of these individuals have already been forced from their homes, many several times over. Homes are gone. Neighbourhoods leveled. Winter has arrived in Gaza, but defense against it has not. It has come without proper shelter, with no power, devoid of warmth.

Students in the Storm

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; intelligent, determined, but deeply weary. Most attend online classes from tents; others from packed rooms where solitude is unattainable and connectivity unreliable. Countless learners have already experienced bereavement. Most have lost their homes. Yet they still try to study. Their resilience is extraordinary, but it should not be required in this way.

In Gaza, what would normally count as routine academic practices—assignments, deadlines—become ethical dilemmas, influenced daily by concern for students’ well-being, comfort and proximity to protection.

During nights like these, I am constantly preoccupied about them. Is their shelter holding? Do they feel any warmth? 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 mostly absent and fuel rare, warmth comes primarily through wearing multiple layers and using whatever blankets are left. Even so, cold nights are excruciating. How then those living in tents?

Aid and Abandonment

Agencies state that over a million people in Gaza live in shelters. Relief items, including weatherproof shelters, have been insufficient. When the cyclone hit, aid organizations reported delivering plastic sheets, tents and mattresses to thousands of families. For those affected, however, this assistance was widely experienced as inconsistent and lacking, limited to short-term fixes that did little against extended hardship to cold, wind and rain. Tents collapse. Sicknesses, hypothermia, and infections linked to damp conditions are rising.

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 restricted or delayed, while attempts to fix broken houses are repeatedly obstructed. Grassroots projects have tried to make do, to distribute plastic sheeting, yet they remain limited by bureaucratic barriers. The failure is political and humanitarian. Solutions exist, but are withheld.

A Symbolic Season

The aspect that renders this pain especially heartbreaking is how preventable it is. It is unconscionable to study, raise children, or fight illness standing surrounded by cold water inside a tent. No student should fear the rain ruining their last notebook. Rain exposes just how vulnerable survival is. It strains physiques worn down by stress, exhaustion, and grief.

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