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The clock read around 8:30 PM on a Thursday when I made my way home in Gaza City. Gusts of wind blew, forcing me inside any longer, leaving me to walk. Initially, it was merely a soft rain, but following a brief walk the rain suddenly grew heavier. It came as no shock. I stopped near a tent, clapping my hands to fight off the chill. A young boy was sitting outside selling homemade cookies. We spoke briefly as I waited, but his attention was elsewhere. I saw the cookies were hastily covered in plastic, already soggy from the drizzle, and I wondered if he’d have enough to sell before the night ended. The cold seeped into everything.

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, only the sound of rain pouring down and the moan of the wind. Rushing forward, seeking escape from the rain, I switched on my mobile phone's torch to light my way. My mind continually drifted to those sheltering inside: How are they passing the time now? What is their state of mind? What emotions do they hold? A severe chill gripped the air. I imagined children huddled under soaked bedding, parents adjusting repeatedly to keep them warm.

When I opened the door to my apartment, the freezing handle served as a subtle yet haunting reminder of the suffering faced across Gaza in these severe cold season. I entered my apartment and was overwhelmed by the guilt of enjoying a dry home when a multitude remained unprotected to the storm.

The Midnight Hour Escalates

During the darkest hours, the storm intensified. Outside, makeshift covers on broken panes billowed and tore, while corrugated metal tore loose and crashed to the ground. Overriding the noise came the sharp, panicked screams of children, piercing the darkness. I felt totally incapable.

For the last fortnight, the rain has been relentless. Chilly, dense, and propelled by strong winds, it has flooded makeshift homes, swamped refugee areas and turned open ground into mud. In other places, 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 fourty most severe 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 unleashes its intensity. Typically, it is faced with preparation and shelter. This year, Gaza has neither. The cold bites through homes, streets are deserted and people merely survive.

But the threat posed by the cold 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 shelled home 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 new attacks, but the outcome of homes damaged from months of bombardment and ultimately defeated by winter rain. Earlier this month, an infant in Khan Younis passed away from exposure to the cold.

Fragile Shelters

Observing the camp nearest my home, I observed the results up close. Thin plastic sheets strained under the weight of water, mattresses floated and clothes hung damply, never fully drying. Each step reinforced how vulnerable these tents are and how close the rain and cold came to taking life and health for countless individuals living in tents and overcrowded shelters.

The majority of these individuals have already been uprooted, many on multiple occasions. Homes are gone. Neighbourhoods razed. Winter has descended upon Gaza, but protection from it has not. It has come without proper shelter, with no power, devoid of warmth.

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 individuals I know; smart, persistent, but profoundly exhausted. Most attend online classes from tents; others from cramped quarters where privacy is impossible and connectivity unreliable. Many of my students have already suffered personal loss. Most have been rendered homeless. Yet they continue their education. Their perseverance is astounding, but it ought not be necessary in this way.

In Gaza, what would normally count as routine academic practices—projects, due dates—turn into moral negotiations, influenced daily by anxiety over students’ security, heat and ability to find refuge.

When the storm rages, I find myself thinking about them. Is their shelter holding? Is there heat? Could the storm have shredded through their shelter as they attempted to rest? For those remaining in apartments, or damaged structures, there is an absence of warmth. With electricity mostly absent and fuel scarce, warmth comes mostly via wearing multiple layers and using whatever blankets are left. Despite this, cold nights are excruciating. How then those living in tents?

Political Failure

Reports indicate that well over a million people in Gaza exist in makeshift accommodations. Relief items, including weatherproof shelters, have been insufficient. When the cyclone hit, humanitarian partners reported distributing tarpaulins, tents and bedding to a multitude of people. For those affected, however, this assistance was widely experienced as patchy and insufficient, limited to temporary solutions that offered scant protection against prolonged exposure to cold, wind and rain. Shelters fail. Respiratory illnesses, hypothermia, and infections caused by damp conditions are rising.

This cannot be described as an surprise calamity. Winter comes every year. People in Gaza view this crisis not as bad luck, but as abandonment. People speak of how necessary items are hindered or postponed, while attempts to repair damaged homes are consistently hampered. Grassroots projects have tried to improvise, to hand out tarps, yet they remain limited by bureaucratic barriers. The root cause is political and humanitarian. Answers are available, but are kept out.

A Preventable Suffering

The factor that intensifies this hardship especially heartbreaking is how unnecessary it should be. No individual ought to study, raise children, or battle sickness 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 challenges health 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 neediest. In Palestine, that {symbolism