🔗 Share this article

The clock read about 8:30 PM on a Thursday when I returned home in Gaza City. The wind howled, making it impossible to remain any longer, so I had to walk. In the beginning, it was merely a soft rain, but after about 200 metres the rain suddenly grew heavier. This was expected. I took shelter by a tent, trying to warm my hands to generate a little heat. A young boy was sitting outside selling homemade cookies. We shared brief remarks while I stood there, but his attention was elsewhere. I saw the cookies were poorly packaged in plastic, already soggy from the drizzle, and I wondered if he’d have enough to sell before the night ended. The freezing temperature invaded every space.

A Trek 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 roar of the wind. Rushing forward, seeking escape from the rain, I activated my mobile phone's torch to illuminate the path. I couldn't stop thinking to those taking refuge within: How are they passing the time now? What thoughts fill their minds? How do they feel? The cold was piercing. I envisioned children curled under soaked bedding, parents moving restlessly to keep them warm.

When I opened the door to my apartment, the cold metal 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 having a roof when so many were exposed to the storm.

The Night Worsens

As midnight passed, the storm grew stronger. Outside, makeshift covers on shattered windows sagged and flapped violently, while tin roofing tore loose and slammed down. Overriding the noise came the sharp, panicked screams of children, shattering the darkness. I felt completely helpless.

During recent days, the rain has been unending. Cold, heavy, and driven by strong winds, it has flooded makeshift homes, inundated temporary settlements 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 fourty most severe days of winter, beginning in late December and continuing through the end of January. It is the true beginning of winter, the moment when the season unleashes its intensity. Normally, it is endured with preparation and shelter. Now, Gaza has none of these. The chill penetrates through homes, streets are empty and people just persevere.

But the threat posed by the cold is far from theoretical. On the Sunday morning before Christmas, civil defense teams found the victims of two children after the roof of a shelled home collapsed in northern Gaza, rescuing five others, including a child and two women. Two people remain missing. These incidents are not new attacks, but the outcome of homes weakened by months of bombardment and succumbing to winter rain. In recent days, a young child in Khan Younis died of exposure to the cold.

Fragile Shelters

Walking past the camp nearest my home, I observed the results up close. Thin plastic sheets strained under the weight of water, mattresses were adrift and clothes remained wet, never fully drying. Each step reinforced how precarious these dwellings are and how close the rain and cold threatened life and health for countless individuals living in tents and cramped refuges.

The majority of these individuals have already been uprooted, many several times over. Homes are destroyed. Neighbourhoods razed. Winter has arrived in Gaza, but shelter from its fury has not. It has come without proper shelter, with no power, lacking heat.

A Teacher's Anguish

As a university lecturer in Gaza, this weather is a heavy burden. My students are not distant names; they are individuals I know; intelligent, determined, but deeply weary. Most attend online classes from tents; others from packed rooms where privacy is impossible and connectivity intermittent. Countless learners have already lost family members. Most have lost their homes. Yet they continue their education. Their perseverance is astounding, but it should not be required in this way.

In Gaza, what would usually be routine academic practices—assignments, deadlines—transform into questions of conscience, shaped each day by anxiety over students’ well-being, comfort and proximity to protection.

During nights like these, I am constantly preoccupied about them. Are they dry? Is there heat? Did the wind tear through their shelter during the night? For those residing in apartments, or the shells that are left, there is no heating. With electricity largely unavailable and fuel scarce, warmth comes mostly via bundling up and using the few bedding items available. Nonetheless, cold nights are unbearable. What, then those living in tents?

Aid and Abandonment

Reports indicate that over a million people in Gaza live in shelters. Aid supplies, including insulated tents, have been insufficient. Amid the last tempest, relief groups reported providing plastic sheets, tents and mattresses to thousands of families. For those affected, however, this assistance was frequently felt to be uneven and inadequate, limited to temporary solutions that were largely ineffective against extended hardship to cold, wind and rain. Shelters fail. Sicknesses, hypothermia, and infections linked to damp conditions are on the upswing.

This cannot be described as an unforeseen disaster. Winter comes every year. People in Gaza view this crisis not as fate, but as neglect. People speak of how essential materials are restricted or delayed, while attempts to fix broken houses are frequently blocked. Community efforts have tried to make do, to provide coverings, yet they remain limited by what is allowed to enter. The root cause is political and humanitarian. Answers are available, but are prevented from arriving.

An Unnecessary Pain

What makes this suffering especially agonizing is how avoidable it could have been. No individual ought to study, raise children, or fight illness standing surrounded by cold water inside a tent. It is wrong for a pupil to worry about the rain damaging their precious phone. Rain reveals just how fragile life has become. It strains physiques worn down by anxiety, fatigue, and loss.

The current cold season aligns with the Christmas season that, for millions, represents warmth, refuge and care for the most vulnerable. In Palestine, that {symbolism