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It was approximately 8:30 PM on a weekday evening when I made my way home in Gaza City. The wind howled, and I couldn’t stay out any longer, so walking was my only option. In the beginning, it was merely a soft rain, but a short distance later the rain became a downpour. This was expected. I took shelter by a tent, clapping my hands to generate a little heat. A young boy was sitting outside selling sweet treats. We exchanged a few words while I stood there, though he didn’t seem interested. I saw the cookies were loosely wrapped in plastic, already soggy from the drizzle, and I wondered if he’d find buyers before the night ended. A deep chill permeated the air.

A Journey Through a Place of Tents

While traversing al-Wehda Street in Gaza City, makeshift shelters crowded both sides of the road. An eerie silence replaced voices from inside them, only the sound of rain pouring down and the roar of the wind. Quickening my pace, trying to dodge the rain, I activated my mobile phone's torch to light my way. My thoughts kept returning to those huddled within: What occupies them now? What are they thinking? How do they feel? It was bitterly cold. I imagined children nestled under wet blankets, 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 suffering faced across Gaza in these severe cold season. I stepped inside my apartment and was overwhelmed by the guilt of possessing shelter when a multitude remained unprotected to the storm.

The Midnight Hour Intensifies

In the middle of the night, the storm reached its peak. Outside, makeshift covers on broken panes sagged and flapped violently, while tin roofing tore loose and slammed down. Cutting through the chaos came the sharp, panicked screams of children, cutting through the darkness. I felt utterly powerless.

Over the past two weeks, the rain has been relentless. Cold, heavy, and driven by strong winds, it has flooded makeshift homes, swamped refugee areas and turned open ground into mud. Elsewhere, this might be called “bad weather”. In Gaza, it is endured in a state of exposure and abandonment.

The Harshest Days

Locals call this time of year as al-Arba’iniya; the 40 coldest and harshest days of winter, starting from late December and continuing through the end of January. It is the real onset of winter, the moment when the season unleashes its intensity. Typically, it is weathered through preparation and shelter. Now, Gaza has none of these. The frost seeps through homes, streets are empty and people simply endure.

But the danger of winter is no longer abstract. In the early hours of 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 are still unaccounted for. These structural failures are not the result of fresh strikes, but the consequence of homes damaged from months of bombardment and finally undone by winter rain. Not long ago, an eight-month-old baby girl in Khan Younis succumbed to exposure to the cold.

Precarious Existence

Passing by the camp nearest my home, I witnessed the impact up close. Flimsy tarpaulins buckled beneath the weight of water, mattresses bobbed in water and clothes hung damply, incapable of drying. Each step reminded me how fragile these shelters were and how close the rain and cold threatened life and health for hundreds of thousands living in tents and packed sanctuaries.

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

A Teacher's Anguish

As a university lecturer in Gaza, this weather is a heavy burden. My students are not figures in a report; they are faces I recognize; intelligent, determined, but deeply weary. Most participate in digital sessions from tents; others from cramped quarters where privacy is impossible and connectivity unreliable. Countless learners have already suffered personal loss. Most have seen their houses destroyed. Yet they still try to study. Their resilience is extraordinary, but it ought not be necessary in this way.

In Gaza, what would usually be routine academic practices—assignments, deadlines—turn into questions of conscience, shaped each day by uncertainty about students’ security, heat and ability to find refuge.

During nights like these, I am constantly preoccupied about them. Is their shelter holding? Is there heat? Has the gale ripped through their shelter while they were trying to sleep? For those still living in apartments, or the shells that are left, there is an absence of warmth. With electricity largely unavailable and fuel rare, warmth comes primarily through wearing multiple layers and using the few bedding items available. Despite this, cold nights are unbearable. How then those living in tents?

Political Failure

Reports indicate that well over a million people in Gaza live in shelters. Relief items, including weatherproof shelters, have been far from enough. Amid the last tempest, aid organizations reported distributing tarpaulins, tents and bedding to numerous households. On the ground, however, this assistance was frequently felt to be patchy and insufficient, limited to band-aid measures that did little against ongoing suffering to cold, wind and rain. Tents collapse. Respiratory illnesses, hypothermia, and infections caused by damp conditions are on the upswing.

This cannot be described as an surprise calamity. Winter arrives cyclically. People in Gaza understand this failure not as fate, but as neglect. People speak of how necessary items are restricted or delayed, while attempts to repair damaged homes are repeatedly obstructed. Local initiatives have tried to make do, to provide coverings, yet they are still constrained by what is allowed to enter. The root cause is political and humanitarian. Remedies are known, but are kept out.

A Symbolic Season

What makes this suffering especially painful is how preventable it is. No one should have to study, raise children, or combat disease standing ankle-deep in 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 stress, exhaustion, and grief.

This winter coincides with the Christmas season that, for millions, epitomizes warmth, refuge and care for the disadvantaged. In Palestine, that {symbolism