🔗 Share this article

The clock read around 8:30 PM on a weekday evening when I returned home in Gaza City. A strong wind was blowing, forcing me inside any longer, so walking was my only option. 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, rubbing my palms together to generate a little heat. A young boy sat nearby selling homemade cookies. We shared brief remarks during my pause, though he didn’t seem interested. I noticed the cookies were hastily covered in plastic, already soggy from the drizzle, and I questioned if he’d have enough to sell before the night ended. A deep chill permeated the air.

A Journey Through a City 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 rain pouring down and the moan 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 sheltering inside: What occupies them now? What are they thinking? How do they feel? The cold was piercing. I envisioned children huddled under soaked bedding, parents adjusting repeatedly to keep them warm.

When I opened the door to my apartment, the icy doorknob served as a quiet but powerful reminder of the suffering faced across Gaza in these harsh winter conditions. I entered my apartment and couldn't shake the guilt of having a roof when a multitude remained unprotected to the storm.

The Darkness Escalates

During the darkest hours, the storm intensified. Outside, makeshift covers on damaged glass whipped and strained, while tin roofing broke away and fell with a clatter. Above it all came the sharp, panicked screams of children, cutting through the darkness. I felt totally incapable.

For the last fortnight, the rain has been incessant. Chilly, dense, and propelled by strong winds, it has drenched shelters, inundated temporary settlements and turned the soil into mud. Elsewhere, this might be called “bad weather”. In Gaza, it is lived with exposure and abandonment.

Al-Arba’iniya

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

But the threat posed by the cold is far from theoretical. In the early hours of Sunday before Christmas, rescue operations retrieved the remains of two children after the roof of a bombarded structure collapsed in northern Gaza, rescuing five others, including a child and two women. Two people have not been found. These incidents are not caused by ongoing hostilities, but the result of homes damaged from months of bombardment and finally undone by winter rain. Earlier this month, an infant in Khan Younis passed away from exposure to the cold.

Precarious Existence

Passing by the camp nearest my home, I saw the consequences up close. Inadequate coverings buckled beneath the weight of water, mattresses floated and clothes were perpetually moist, always damp. Each step highlighted how fragile these shelters were and how close the rain and cold came to taking life and health for hundreds of thousands living in tents and packed sanctuaries.

A great number of these residents have already been forced from their homes, many repeatedly. Homes are lost. Neighbourhoods razed. Winter has come to Gaza, but protection from it has not. It has come lacking adequate housing, with no power, devoid of warmth.

The Weight on Education

As a university lecturer in Gaza, this weather weighs heavily on me. My students are not mere statistics; they are individuals I know; intelligent, determined, but profoundly exhausted. Most attend online classes from tents; others from overcrowded shelters where privacy is impossible and connectivity intermittent. Many of my students have already lost family members. Most have lost their homes. Yet they still try to study. Their fortitude is remarkable, but it should not be required in this way.

In Gaza, what would usually be routine academic practices—tasks, schedules—turn into moral negotiations, influenced daily by uncertainty about students’ safety, warmth and access to shelter.

On evenings such as this, I am constantly preoccupied about them. Do they have dryness? Is there heat? Did the wind tear through their shelter while they were trying to sleep? For those remaining in apartments, or what remains of them, there is an absence of warmth. With electricity largely unavailable and fuel in short supply, warmth comes primarily through donning extra clothing and using whatever blankets are left. Even so, cold nights are unbearable. How then those living in tents?

Political Failure

Figures show that over a million people in Gaza exist in makeshift accommodations. Aid supplies, including weatherproof shelters, have been insufficient. Amid the last tempest, relief groups reported distributing plastic sheets, tents and mattresses to thousands of families. For those affected, however, this assistance was widely experienced as uneven and inadequate, limited to short-term fixes that were largely ineffective against extended hardship to cold, wind and rain. Structures give way. Chest infections, hypothermia, and infections linked to damp conditions are rising.

This is not an unexpected catastrophe. Winter is an annual event. People in Gaza view this crisis not as fate, but as abandonment. People speak of how critical supplies are restricted or delayed, while attempts to fix broken houses are consistently hampered. Community efforts have tried to improvise, to distribute plastic sheeting, yet they are still constrained by bureaucratic barriers. The culpability lies in political and humanitarian. Solutions exist, but are prevented from arriving.

An Unnecessary Pain

What makes this suffering especially agonizing is how preventable it is. It is unconscionable to study, raise children, or battle sickness standing ankle-deep in cold water inside a tent. It is wrong for a pupil to worry about the rain destroying their final textbook. Rain reveals just how fragile life has become. It strains physiques worn down by pressure, weariness, and sorrow.

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