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The clock read around 8:30 PM on a weekday evening when I headed back home in Gaza City. Gusts of wind blew, forcing me inside any longer, so walking was my only option. At first, it was just a gentle sprinkle, but following a brief walk the rain suddenly grew heavier. This was expected. I paused beside a tent, clapping my hands to draw some warmth. A young boy sat nearby selling baked goods. We spoke briefly during my pause, but his attention was elsewhere. I saw the cookies were hastily covered in plastic, already soggy from the drizzle, and I pondered if he’d find buyers before the night ended. The freezing temperature invaded every space.

A Journey Through a Landscape of Tents

While traversing al-Wehda Street in Gaza City, canvas structures flanked both sides of the road. There were no voices from inside them, only the sound of rain pouring down and the roar of the wind. As I hurried on, seeking escape from the rain, I switched on my mobile phone's torch to light my way. My thoughts kept returning to those taking refuge within: What are they doing now? What thoughts fill their minds? What are they experiencing? A severe chill gripped the air. I envisioned children curled under soaked bedding, parents shifting constantly to keep them warm.

When I opened the door to my apartment, the cold metal served as a understated yet stark reminder of the suffering faced across Gaza in these brutal winter climate. I entered my apartment and felt consumed by the guilt of possessing shelter when so many were exposed to the storm.

The Midnight Hour Intensifies

As midnight passed, the storm grew stronger. Outside, makeshift covers on shattered windows sagged and flapped violently, while tin roofing broke away and fell with a clatter. Overriding the noise came the sharp, panicked screams of children, shattering the darkness. I felt totally incapable.

During recent days, the rain has been incessant. Chilly, dense, and propelled by strong winds, it has drenched shelters, flooded makeshift camps 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 Cruelest Season

Locals call this time of year as al-Arba’iniya; the most bitter forty days of winter, commencing in late December and continuing through the end of January. It is the real onset of winter, the moment when the season shows its true power. Ordinarily, it is faced with preparation and shelter. Currently, Gaza has neither. The cold bites through homes, streets are empty and people merely survive.

But the danger of winter is far from theoretical. In the early hours of Sunday before Christmas, recovery efforts recovered the bodies of two children after the roof of a bombarded structure collapsed in northern Gaza, saving five more people, including a child and two women. Two people have not been found. Such collapses are not the result of fresh strikes, but the outcome of homes weakened by months of bombardment and succumbing to winter rain. Earlier this month, a young child in Khan Younis died of exposure to the cold.

A Life in Tents

Walking past the camp nearest my home, I saw the consequences up close. Thin plastic sheets sagged under 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 came to claiming life and health for countless individuals living in tents and cramped refuges.

Most of these people have already been uprooted, many on multiple occasions. Homes are destroyed. Neighbourhoods razed. Winter has arrived in Gaza, but defense against it has not. It has come lacking adequate housing, with no power, lacking heat.

The Weight on Education

As a university lecturer in Gaza, this weather causes deep concern. My students are not figures in a report; they are individuals I know; intelligent, determined, but profoundly exhausted. Most attend online classes from tents; others from packed rooms where privacy is impossible and connectivity sporadic. Many of my students have already experienced bereavement. Most have been rendered homeless. Yet they persist in learning. Their resilience is extraordinary, but it ought not be necessary in this way.

In Gaza, what would usually be routine academic practices—projects, due dates—become questions of conscience, influenced daily by uncertainty about students’ well-being, comfort and proximity to protection.

When the storm rages, I am constantly preoccupied about them. Do they have dryness? Are they warm? Did the wind tear through their shelter during the night? For those still living in apartments, or the shells that are left, there is no heating. With electricity scarce and fuel in short supply, warmth comes mainly from donning extra clothing and using the few bedding items available. Despite this, cold nights are excruciating. What, then those living in tents?

Political Failure

Agencies state that over a million people in Gaza live in shelters. Aid supplies, including thermal blankets, have been far from enough. When the cyclone hit, aid organizations reported providing tarpaulins, tents and bedding to numerous households. For those affected, however, this assistance was widely experienced as patchy and insufficient, limited to temporary solutions that did little against prolonged exposure to cold, wind and rain. Tents collapse. Chest infections, hypothermia, and infections caused by damp conditions are rising.

This is not an unforeseen disaster. Winter is an annual event. People in Gaza understand this failure not as misfortune, but as neglect. People speak of how necessary items are blocked or slowed, while attempts to fix broken houses are consistently hampered. Community efforts have tried to make do, to hand out tarps, yet they are still constrained by what is allowed to enter. The failure is political and humanitarian. Answers are available, but are withheld.

A Preventable Suffering

What makes this suffering especially agonizing is how preventable it is. 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 destroying their final textbook. Rain reveals just how fragile life has become. It tests bodies worn down by pressure, weariness, and sorrow.

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