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It was around 8:30 PM on a Thursday when I made my way home in Gaza City. Gusts of wind blew, 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. This was expected. I took shelter by a tent, clapping my hands to draw some warmth. A young boy sat nearby selling homemade cookies. We exchanged a few words as I waited, although he appeared disengaged. I observed the cookies were poorly packaged in plastic, dampened from the drizzle, and I pondered if he’d manage to sell them all before the night ended. The cold seeped into everything.

A Walk Through a City of Tents

While traversing al-Wehda Street in Gaza City, makeshift shelters crowded both sides of the road. No sounds of conversation came from inside them, just the noise of rain pouring down and the whistle of the wind. Rushing forward, trying to dodge the rain, I activated my mobile phone's torch to illuminate the path. I couldn't stop thinking to those taking refuge within: What occupies them now? What is their state of mind? What are they experiencing? The cold was piercing. I pictured children curled under soaked bedding, parents moving restlessly to keep them warm.

Upon opening the door to my apartment, the cold metal served as a quiet but powerful reminder of the struggles borne across Gaza in these brutal winter climate. I stepped inside my apartment and was overwhelmed by the guilt of enjoying a dry home when a multitude remained unprotected to the storm.

The Night Intensifies

As midnight passed, the storm intensified. Outside, makeshift covers on broken panes sagged and flapped violently, while metal sheets ripped free and crashed to the ground. Above it all came the desperate, terrified shouts of children, piercing the darkness. I felt completely helpless.

Over the past two weeks, the rain has been unending. Freezing, pouring, and carried by strong winds, it has soaked tents, swamped refugee areas and turned open ground into mud. In different contexts, this might be called “poor conditions”. In Gaza, it is lived with exposure and abandonment.

The Harshest Days

Palestinians know 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 reveals its full force. Typically, it is faced with preparation and shelter. Now, Gaza has neither. The chill penetrates through homes, streets are deserted and people merely survive.

But the threat posed by the cold is now very real. On the Sunday morning before Christmas, recovery efforts retrieved the remains of two children after the roof of a war-damaged building collapsed in northern Gaza, saving five more people, including a child and two women. Two people remain missing. These incidents are not new attacks, but the consequence of homes weakened by months of bombardment and finally undone by winter rain. Earlier this month, an infant in Khan Younis passed away from exposure to the cold.

A Life in Tents

Passing by the camp nearest my home, I observed the results up close. Flimsy tarpaulins sagged under the weight of water, mattresses bobbed in water and clothes hung damply, 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 countless individuals living in tents and overcrowded shelters.

The majority of these individuals have already been uprooted, many several times over. Homes are lost. Neighbourhoods leveled. Winter has descended upon Gaza, but defense against it has not. It has come devoid of safe refuge, without electricity, without heating.

The Weight on Education

In my role as a professor in Gaza, this weather is a heavy burden. My students are not distant names; they are young people I speak to; smart, persistent, but deeply weary. Most attend online classes from tents; others from cramped quarters where privacy is impossible and connectivity intermittent. Many of my students have already experienced bereavement. Most have seen their houses destroyed. Yet they continue their education. Their fortitude is remarkable, but it ought not be necessary in this way.

In Gaza, what would typically constitute routine academic practices—projects, due dates—become questions of conscience, influenced daily by uncertainty about students’ well-being, comfort and ability to find refuge.

When the storm rages, I cannot help but wonder about them. Do they have dryness? Are they warm? Did the wind tear through their shelter while they were trying to sleep? For those remaining in apartments, or the shells that are left, there is no heating. With electricity scarce and fuel rare, warmth comes mostly via donning extra clothing and using the few bedding items available. Despite this, cold nights are excruciating. What, then those living in tents?

Aid and Abandonment

Figures show that more than a million people in Gaza live in shelters. Aid supplies, including thermal blankets, have been insufficient. When the cyclone hit, humanitarian partners reported delivering coverings, shelters and sleeping materials to numerous households. 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. Structures give way. Respiratory illnesses, hypothermia, and infections linked to damp conditions are rising.

This is not an unforeseen disaster. Winter arrives cyclically. People in Gaza view this crisis not as fate, but as being forsaken. People speak of how critical supplies are restricted or delayed, while attempts to fix broken houses are consistently hampered. Community efforts have tried to improvise, to hand out tarps, yet they are still constrained by restrictions on imports. The root cause is political and humanitarian. Remedies are known, but are withheld.

A Symbolic Season

What makes this suffering especially painful is how avoidable it could have been. It is unconscionable 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 precarious existence is. It strains physiques worn down by stress, exhaustion, and grief.

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