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It was approximately 8:30 PM on a weekday evening when I headed back home in Gaza City. The wind howled, making it impossible to remain any longer, so I had to walk. Initially, it was merely a soft rain, but a short distance later the rain intensified abruptly. It came as no shock. I paused beside a tent, clapping my hands to fight off the chill. A young boy was sitting outside selling baked goods. We spoke briefly while I stood there, but his attention was elsewhere. I noticed the cookies were poorly packaged in plastic, already soggy from the drizzle, and I pondered if he’d manage to sell them all before the night ended. The freezing temperature invaded every space.

A Walk Through a Landscape of Tents

While traversing al-Wehda Street in Gaza City, canvas structures flanked both sides of the road. No sounds of conversation came from inside them, just the noise of falling water and the moan of the wind. Quickening my pace, trying to dodge the rain, I activated my mobile phone's torch to light my way. My mind continually drifted to those huddled within: How are they passing the time now? What thoughts fill their minds? What emotions do they hold? It was bitterly cold. I envisioned children huddled under wet blankets, parents moving restlessly to keep them warm.

As I unlocked the door to my apartment, the icy doorknob served as a quiet but powerful reminder of the struggles borne across Gaza in these severe cold season. I walked into my apartment and couldn't shake the guilt of enjoying a dry home when a multitude remained unprotected to the storm.

The Midnight Hour Worsens

As midnight passed, the storm intensified. Outside, plastic sheeting on shattered windows whipped and strained, while corrugated metal broke away and crashed to the ground. Cutting through the chaos came the sharp, panicked screams of children, cutting through the darkness. I felt completely helpless.

For the last fortnight, 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 “inclement weather”. In Gaza, it is lived with exposure and abandonment.

Al-Arba’iniya

Residents refer to this time of year as al-Arba’iniya; the most bitter forty days of winter, commencing in late December and persisting to the end of January. It is the definite start of winter, the moment when the season unleashes its intensity. Ordinarily, it is endured with preparation and shelter. Now, Gaza has neither. The chill penetrates through homes, streets are deserted and people just persevere.

But the peril of the season is now very real. Early on the Sunday before Christmas, recovery efforts retrieved the remains 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 remain missing. Such collapses are not caused by ongoing hostilities, but the result of homes damaged from months of bombardment and finally undone by winter rain. Earlier this month, an eight-month-old baby girl in Khan Younis succumbed to exposure to the cold.

A Life in Tents

Passing by the camp nearest my home, I saw the consequences up close. Flimsy tarpaulins sagged under the weight of water, mattresses were adrift 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 countless individuals living in tents and packed sanctuaries.

A great number of these residents have already been forced from their homes, many repeatedly. Homes are destroyed. Neighbourhoods leveled. Winter has come to Gaza, but protection from it has not. It has come without proper shelter, in darkness, lacking heat.

Students in the Storm

As a university lecturer in Gaza, this weather causes deep concern. My students are not figures in a report; they are faces I recognize; smart, persistent, but deeply weary. Most participate in digital sessions from tents; others from packed rooms where solitude is unattainable and connectivity intermittent. Many of my students have already suffered personal loss. Most have been rendered homeless. Yet they persist in learning. Their fortitude is remarkable, but it should not be required in this way.

In Gaza, what would normally count as routine academic practices—assignments, deadlines—become moral negotiations, shaped each day by uncertainty about students’ safety, warmth and access to shelter.

When the storm rages, I cannot help but wonder about them. Is their shelter holding? Are they warm? Did the wind tear through their shelter as they attempted to rest? For those remaining in apartments, or the shells that are left, there is a lack of heat. With electricity largely unavailable and fuel in short supply, warmth comes mainly from donning extra clothing and using any remaining covers. Even so, cold nights are intolerable. How then those living in tents?

Aid and Abandonment

Agencies state that more than a million people in Gaza exist in makeshift accommodations. Aid supplies, including thermal blankets, have been insufficient. When the cyclone hit, relief groups reported distributing plastic sheets, tents and mattresses to a multitude of people. For those affected, however, this assistance was widely experienced as inconsistent and lacking, limited to short-term fixes that offered scant protection against prolonged exposure to cold, wind and rain. Shelters fail. Chest infections, hypothermia, and infections associated with damp conditions are increasing.

This goes beyond an unexpected catastrophe. Winter arrives cyclically. People in Gaza understand this failure not as bad luck, but as neglect. People speak of how essential materials are blocked or slowed, while attempts to fix broken houses are repeatedly obstructed. Grassroots projects have tried to find solutions, to hand out tarps, yet they remain limited by restrictions on imports. The failure is political and humanitarian. Solutions exist, but are kept out.

A Symbolic Season

What makes this suffering especially agonizing is how preventable it is. No one should have to study, raise children, or battle sickness standing ankle-deep in cold water inside a tent. No learner should dread the rain ruining their last notebook. Rain reveals just how precarious existence is. It challenges health worn down by anxiety, fatigue, and loss.

This year's chill occurs alongside the Christmas season that, for millions, represents warmth, refuge and care for the disadvantaged. In Palestine, that {symbolism