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The clock read around 8:30 PM on a Thursday when I headed back home in Gaza City. The wind howled, making it impossible to remain any longer, so walking was my only option. In the beginning, it was just a gentle sprinkle, but after about 200 metres the rain became a downpour. That wasn’t surprising. I took shelter by a tent, trying to warm my hands to generate a little heat. A young boy had positioned himself selling baked goods. We exchanged a few words during my pause, although he appeared disengaged. I observed the cookies were poorly packaged in plastic, moist from the drizzle, and I questioned if he’d manage to sell them all before the night ended. A deep chill permeated the air.

A Journey Through a Place of Tents

Walking down al-Wehda Street in Gaza City, makeshift shelters crowded both sides of the road. No sounds of conversation came from inside them, only the sound of rain pouring down and the roar of the wind. Quickening my pace, attempting to avoid the rain, I activated my mobile phone's torch to illuminate the path. I couldn't stop thinking to those huddled within: What are they doing now? What is their state of mind? What are they experiencing? It was bitterly cold. I imagined children huddled under damp covers, parents moving restlessly to keep them warm.

Upon opening the door to my apartment, the freezing handle served as a quiet but powerful reminder of the hardships endured across Gaza in these severe cold season. I stepped inside my apartment and felt consumed by the guilt of enjoying a dry home when countless others faced exposure to the storm.

The Midnight Hour Intensifies

As midnight passed, the storm reached its peak. Outside, makeshift covers on broken panes sagged and flapped violently, while corrugated metal ripped free and slammed down. Above it all came the sharp, panicked screams of children, cutting through the darkness. I felt totally incapable.

Over the past two weeks, the rain has been incessant. Freezing, pouring, and carried by strong winds, it has soaked tents, flooded makeshift camps and turned bare earth into mud. Elsewhere, this might be called “bad weather”. In Gaza, it is experienced amidst exposure and abandonment.

The Cruelest Season

Locals call this time of year as al-Arba’iniya; the fourty most severe 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 reveals its full force. Typically, it is weathered through preparation and shelter. Currently, Gaza has no such defenses. The chill penetrates through homes, streets are vacant and people merely survive.

But the danger of winter is now very real. In the early hours of Sunday before Christmas, rescue operations recovered the bodies 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 have not been found. These incidents are not new attacks, but the result of homes damaged from months of bombardment and ultimately defeated by winter rain. In recent days, an eight-month-old baby girl in Khan Younis succumbed to exposure to the cold.

A Life in Tents

Walking past the camp nearest my home, I observed the results up close. Flimsy tarpaulins buckled beneath the weight of water, mattresses floated and clothes remained wet, always damp. 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 cramped refuges.

The majority of these individuals have already been displaced, many repeatedly. Homes are lost. Neighbourhoods flattened. 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

In my role as a professor in Gaza, this weather causes deep concern. My students are not figures in a report; they are individuals I know; smart, persistent, but deeply weary. Most participate in digital sessions from tents; others from overcrowded shelters where privacy is impossible and connectivity unreliable. Countless learners have already suffered personal loss. Most have seen their houses destroyed. Yet they continue their education. Their perseverance is astounding, but it should not be required in this way.

In Gaza, what would typically constitute routine academic practices—projects, due dates—turn into ethical dilemmas, dictated every moment by anxiety over students’ well-being, comfort and access to shelter.

When the storm rages, I am constantly preoccupied about them. Is their shelter holding? Is there heat? Could the storm have shredded through their shelter as they attempted to rest? For those residing in apartments, or the shells that are left, there is no heating. With electricity scarce and fuel in short supply, warmth comes mostly via bundling up and using the few bedding items available. Even so, cold nights are unbearable. What about those living in tents?

Aid and Abandonment

Figures show that well over a million people in Gaza reside in temporary housing. Aid supplies, including weatherproof shelters, have been far from enough. During the recent storm, humanitarian partners reported delivering tarpaulins, tents and bedding to thousands of families. In reality, however, this assistance was widely experienced as uneven and inadequate, limited to band-aid measures that were largely ineffective against extended hardship to cold, wind and rain. Structures give way. Sicknesses, hypothermia, and infections associated with damp conditions are increasing.

This is not an unexpected catastrophe. Winter arrives cyclically. People in Gaza view this crisis not as misfortune, but as neglect. People speak of how critical supplies are restricted or delayed, while attempts to repair damaged homes are consistently hampered. Community efforts have tried to make do, to provide coverings, yet they continue to be hampered by bureaucratic barriers. The root cause is political and humanitarian. Answers are available, but are kept out.

A Symbolic Season

The factor that intensifies this hardship especially agonizing is how preventable it is. 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 ruining their last notebook. Rain exposes just how vulnerable survival is. It challenges health worn down by anxiety, fatigue, and loss.

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