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The time was approximately 8:30 PM on a Thursday when I headed back home in Gaza City. A strong wind was blowing, and I couldn’t stay out any longer, so I had to walk. Initially, it was only a light drizzle, 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 fight off the chill. A young boy had positioned himself selling homemade cookies. We spoke briefly during my pause, but his attention was elsewhere. I saw the cookies were hastily covered in plastic, moist from the drizzle, and I wondered if he’d find buyers before the night ended. The cold seeped into everything.

A Journey Through a Landscape of Tents

While traversing 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 falling water and the whistle of the wind. As I hurried on, 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: What occupies them now? What are they thinking? What emotions do they hold? The cold was piercing. I envisioned children curled under damp covers, parents adjusting repeatedly to keep them warm.

When I opened the door to my apartment, the freezing handle served as a subtle yet haunting reminder of the suffering faced across Gaza in these brutal winter climate. 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 Darkness Intensifies

As midnight passed, the storm reached its peak. Outside, makeshift covers on shattered windows billowed and tore, while metal sheets tore loose and slammed down. Overriding the noise came the desperate, terrified shouts of children, piercing the darkness. I felt utterly powerless.

Over the past two weeks, the rain has been incessant. Cold, heavy, and driven by strong winds, it has flooded makeshift homes, flooded makeshift camps and turned the soil into mud. In other places, this might be called “poor conditions”. In Gaza, it is lived with exposure and abandonment.

Al-Arba’iniya

Locals call this time of year as al-Arba’iniya; the 40 coldest and harshest days of winter, starting from late December and persisting to the end of January. It is the true beginning of winter, the moment when the season unleashes its intensity. Typically, it is endured with preparation and shelter. Now, Gaza has no such defenses. The frost seeps through homes, streets are empty and people simply endure.

But the danger of winter is now very real. Early on the Sunday before Christmas, rescue operations recovered the bodies 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 remain missing. These structural failures are not caused by ongoing hostilities, but the outcome of homes weakened by months of bombardment and ultimately defeated by winter rain. Not long ago, an infant in Khan Younis passed away from exposure to the cold.

A Life in Tents

Passing by the camp nearest my home, I witnessed the impact up close. Thin plastic sheets sagged under the weight of water, mattresses were adrift and clothes remained wet, 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 hundreds of thousands living in tents and overcrowded shelters.

Most of these people have already been uprooted, many several times over. Homes are gone. Neighbourhoods flattened. Winter has descended upon Gaza, but protection from it has not. It has come without proper shelter, in darkness, without heating.

The Weight on Education

As a university lecturer in Gaza, this weather is a heavy burden. My students are not figures in a report; they are individuals I know; intelligent, determined, but profoundly exhausted. Most join virtual lessons from tents; others from overcrowded shelters where privacy is impossible and connectivity intermittent. Many of my students have already lost family members. Most have seen their houses destroyed. Yet they persist in learning. Their perseverance is astounding, but it ought not be necessary in this way.

In Gaza, what would normally count as routine academic practices—projects, due dates—transform into questions of conscience, shaped each day by uncertainty about students’ safety, warmth and proximity to protection.

On evenings such as this, I cannot help but wonder about them. Is their shelter holding? Is there heat? Could the storm have shredded through their shelter during the night? For those residing in apartments, or what remains of them, there is a lack of heat. With electricity mostly absent and fuel rare, warmth comes mostly via wearing multiple layers and using any remaining covers. Despite this, cold nights are excruciating. What about 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 insufficient. During the recent storm, relief groups reported providing tarpaulins, tents and bedding to thousands of families. In reality, however, this assistance was widely experienced as patchy and insufficient, limited to short-term fixes that did little against ongoing suffering to cold, wind and rain. Tents collapse. Sicknesses, hypothermia, and infections associated with damp conditions are rising.

This is not an unforeseen disaster. Winter is an annual event. People in Gaza view this crisis not as fate, but as abandonment. People speak of how necessary items are blocked or slowed, while attempts to fix broken houses are consistently hampered. Local initiatives have tried to improvise, to distribute plastic sheeting, yet they are still constrained by what is allowed to enter. The failure is political and humanitarian. Answers are available, but are kept out.

A Preventable Suffering

The factor that intensifies this hardship especially heartbreaking is how unnecessary it should be. No one should have to study, raise children, or fight illness standing surrounded by cold water inside a tent. No student should fear the rain damaging their precious phone. Rain reveals just how precarious existence is. It strains physiques worn down by pressure, weariness, and sorrow.

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