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The clock read about 8:30 PM on a Thursday when I headed back home in Gaza City. The wind howled, and I couldn’t stay out any longer, so I had to walk. Initially, it was just a gentle sprinkle, but a short distance later the rain intensified abruptly. It came as no shock. I paused beside a tent, trying to warm my hands to fight off the chill. A young boy sat nearby selling homemade cookies. We exchanged a few words during my pause, but his attention was elsewhere. I saw the cookies were poorly packaged in plastic, moist from the drizzle, and I pondered if he’d have enough to sell before the night ended. The cold seeped into everything.

A Walk Through a Place of Tents

While traversing al-Wehda Street in Gaza City, tents lined both sides of the road. An eerie silence replaced voices from inside them, merely the din of torrential rain and the roar of the wind. As I hurried on, trying to dodge the rain, I activated my mobile phone's torch to illuminate the path. My mind continually drifted to those huddled within: How are they passing the time now? What thoughts fill their minds? What are they experiencing? The cold was piercing. I imagined children curled under soaked bedding, parents adjusting repeatedly to keep them warm.

When I opened 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 entered my apartment and was overwhelmed by the guilt of possessing shelter when countless others faced exposure to the storm.

The Midnight Hour Intensifies

During the darkest hours, the storm intensified. Outside, tarps on broken panes whipped and strained, while corrugated metal broke away and slammed down. Overriding the noise came the desperate, terrified shouts of children, cutting through the darkness. I felt completely helpless.

During recent days, the rain has been unending. Freezing, pouring, and carried by strong winds, it has flooded makeshift homes, swamped refugee areas and turned bare earth into mud. Elsewhere, 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 fourty most severe days of winter, starting from late December and lasting until the end of January. It is the real onset of winter, the moment when the season reveals its full force. Normally, it is faced with preparation and shelter. Now, Gaza has no such defenses. The chill penetrates through homes, streets are vacant and people simply endure.

But the danger of winter is now very real. Early on the Sunday before Christmas, civil defense teams recovered the bodies 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. Such collapses are not caused by ongoing hostilities, but the consequence of homes compromised after months of bombardment and succumbing to winter rain. In recent days, a young child in Khan Younis succumbed to exposure to the cold.

Precarious Existence

Observing the camp nearest my home, I witnessed the impact up close. Thin plastic sheets buckled beneath the weight of water, mattresses floated and clothes remained wet, always damp. Each step reminded me how vulnerable these tents are and how close the rain and cold came to taking life and health for a vast population living in tents and cramped refuges.

Most of these people have already been displaced, many on multiple occasions. Homes are lost. Neighbourhoods razed. Winter has come to Gaza, but shelter from its fury has not. It has come lacking adequate housing, with no power, without heating.

The Weight on Education

Being an educator in Gaza, this weather causes deep concern. My students are not mere statistics; they are individuals I know; smart, persistent, but deeply weary. Most participate in digital sessions from tents; others from packed rooms where solitude is unattainable and connectivity sporadic. Many of my students have already lost family members. Most have seen their houses destroyed. Yet they still try to study. Their fortitude is remarkable, but it should not be required in this way.

In Gaza, what would typically constitute routine academic practices—projects, due dates—transform into ethical dilemmas, influenced daily by uncertainty about students’ safety, warmth and proximity to protection.

When the storm rages, I am constantly preoccupied about them. Are they dry? 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 scarce, warmth comes mostly via donning extra clothing and using the few bedding items available. Despite this, cold nights are excruciating. How then those living in tents?

Political Failure

Figures show that more than a million people in Gaza exist in makeshift accommodations. Humanitarian assistance, including insulated tents, have been insufficient. Amid the last tempest, aid organizations reported providing coverings, shelters and sleeping materials to a multitude of people. In reality, however, this assistance was frequently felt to be inconsistent and lacking, limited to short-term fixes that did little against ongoing suffering to cold, wind and rain. Shelters fail. Sicknesses, hypothermia, and infections linked to damp conditions are rising.

This is not an surprise calamity. Winter arrives cyclically. People in Gaza understand this failure not as misfortune, but as being forsaken. People speak of how necessary items are hindered or postponed, while attempts to reinforce weakened structures are frequently blocked. Community efforts have tried to improvise, to hand out tarps, yet they remain limited by restrictions on imports. The culpability lies in political and humanitarian. Answers are available, but are withheld.

A Symbolic Season

The factor that intensifies this hardship especially painful is how preventable it is. No individual ought to study, raise children, or combat disease standing knee-high in cold water inside a tent. It is wrong for a pupil to worry about the rain ruining their last notebook. Rain reveals just how fragile life has become. It tests bodies worn down by pressure, weariness, and sorrow.

This year's chill aligns with the Christmas season that, for millions, symbolises warmth, refuge and care for the disadvantaged. In Palestine, that {symbolism