🔗 Share this article

It was around 8:30 PM on a weekday evening when I made my way home in Gaza City. The wind howled, and I couldn’t stay out any longer, so I had to walk. In the beginning, it was only a light drizzle, but a short distance later the rain suddenly grew heavier. It came as no shock. I stopped near a tent, rubbing my palms together to draw some warmth. A young boy was sitting outside selling baked goods. We shared brief remarks while I stood there, although he appeared disengaged. I noticed the cookies were poorly packaged 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 Walk Through a Landscape of Tents

Walking down al-Wehda Street in Gaza City, canvas structures flanked both sides of the road. There were no voices from inside them, just the noise of torrential rain and the moan of the wind. Quickening my pace, trying to dodge the rain, I activated my mobile phone's torch to illuminate the path. My thoughts kept returning to those huddled within: What are they doing now? What is their state of mind? What emotions do they hold? The cold was piercing. I imagined children curled under wet blankets, parents moving restlessly to keep them warm.

As I unlocked the door to my apartment, the freezing handle served as a understated yet stark reminder of the struggles borne across Gaza in these severe cold season. I stepped inside my apartment and felt consumed by the guilt of possessing shelter when countless others faced exposure to the storm.

The Night Escalates

During the darkest hours, the storm grew stronger. Outside, plastic sheeting on shattered windows billowed and tore, while corrugated metal tore loose and slammed down. Above it all came the desperate, terrified shouts of children, shattering the darkness. I felt completely helpless.

During recent days, the rain has been incessant. Chilly, dense, and propelled by strong winds, it has soaked tents, inundated temporary settlements and turned open ground into mud. Elsewhere, this might be called “poor conditions”. 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 most bitter forty days of winter, starting from late December and lasting until the end of January. It is the definite start of winter, the moment when the season unleashes its intensity. Ordinarily, it is faced with preparation and shelter. This year, Gaza has neither. The chill penetrates through homes, streets are empty and people merely survive.

But the threat posed by the cold is no longer abstract. On the Sunday morning before Christmas, recovery efforts found the victims of two children after the roof of a shelled home collapsed in northern Gaza, saving five more people, including a child and two women. Two people are still unaccounted for. These structural failures are not the result of fresh strikes, but the consequence of homes compromised after months of bombardment and finally undone by winter rain. Not long ago, a young child in Khan Younis passed away from exposure to the cold.

A Life in Tents

Observing the camp nearest my home, I witnessed the impact up close. Thin plastic sheets strained under the weight of water, mattresses bobbed in water and clothes hung damply, never fully drying. Each step highlighted how vulnerable these tents are and how close the rain and cold came to taking life and health for a vast population living in tents and overcrowded shelters.

A great number of these residents have already been displaced, many repeatedly. Homes are gone. Neighbourhoods leveled. Winter has come to Gaza, but defense against it has not. It has come lacking adequate housing, without electricity, without heating.

Students in the Storm

As a university lecturer in Gaza, this weather is a heavy burden. My students are not distant names; they are young people I speak to; intelligent, determined, but profoundly exhausted. Most participate in digital sessions from tents; others from packed rooms where solitude is unattainable and connectivity unreliable. A significant number of pupils have already experienced bereavement. Most have been rendered homeless. Yet they continue their education. Their resilience is extraordinary, but it should not be required in this way.

In Gaza, what would normally count as routine academic practices—tasks, schedules—turn into ethical dilemmas, dictated every moment by uncertainty about students’ well-being, comfort and ability to find refuge.

During nights like these, I cannot help but wonder about them. Do they have dryness? Is there heat? Did the wind tear through their shelter during the night? For those remaining in apartments, or the shells that are left, there is an absence of warmth. With electricity scarce and fuel scarce, warmth comes mainly from bundling up and using whatever blankets are left. Even so, cold nights are intolerable. What, then those living in tents?

Aid and Abandonment

Figures show that more than a million people in Gaza reside in temporary housing. Relief items, including insulated tents, have been inadequate. When the cyclone hit, aid organizations reported providing tarpaulins, tents and bedding to a multitude of people. For those affected, however, this assistance was frequently felt to be inconsistent and lacking, limited to temporary solutions that offered scant protection against ongoing suffering to cold, wind and rain. Shelters fail. Sicknesses, hypothermia, and infections linked to damp conditions are rising.

This is not an surprise calamity. Winter arrives cyclically. People in Gaza view this crisis not as misfortune, but as abandonment. People speak of how essential materials are blocked or slowed, while attempts to repair damaged homes are frequently blocked. Local initiatives have tried to improvise, to hand out tarps, yet they remain limited by restrictions on imports. The culpability lies in political and humanitarian. Solutions exist, but are prevented from arriving.

A Preventable Suffering

The factor that intensifies this hardship especially painful is how preventable it is. No one should have to study, raise children, or fight illness standing knee-high in cold water inside a tent. No learner should dread the rain destroying their final textbook. Rain lays bare just how fragile life has become. It strains physiques worn down by stress, exhaustion, and grief.

The current cold season coincides with the Christmas season that, for millions, epitomizes warmth, refuge and care for the neediest. In Palestine, that {symbolism