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The time was around 8:30 PM on a weekday evening when I made my way home in Gaza City. The wind howled, making it impossible to remain any longer, leaving me to walk. In the beginning, it was merely a soft rain, but after about 200 metres the rain intensified abruptly. That wasn’t surprising. I paused beside a tent, clapping my hands to fight off the chill. A young boy was sitting outside selling homemade cookies. We shared brief remarks as I waited, though he didn’t seem interested. I observed the cookies were hastily covered in plastic, dampened from the drizzle, and I questioned if he’d find buyers before the night ended. The cold seeped into everything.

A Walk Through a Place of Tents

While traversing al-Wehda Street in Gaza City, makeshift shelters crowded both sides of the road. There were no voices from inside them, merely the din 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 see the road ahead. My thoughts kept returning to those huddled within: What occupies them now? What is their state of mind? What emotions do they hold? It was bitterly cold. I pictured children curled under soaked bedding, parents moving restlessly to keep them warm.

As I unlocked the door to my apartment, the icy doorknob served as a subtle yet haunting reminder of the hardships endured across Gaza in these brutal winter climate. I walked into my apartment and felt consumed by the guilt of having a roof when so many were exposed to the storm.

The Darkness Escalates

As midnight passed, the storm grew stronger. Outside, plastic sheeting on broken panes sagged and flapped violently, while metal sheets tore loose and crashed to the ground. Overriding the noise came the desperate, terrified shouts of children, cutting through the darkness. I felt totally incapable.

Over the past two weeks, the rain has been incessant. Cold, heavy, and driven by strong winds, it has flooded makeshift homes, swamped refugee areas and turned bare earth into mud. In different contexts, this might be called “bad weather”. In Gaza, it is experienced amidst exposure and abandonment.

The Cruelest Season

Palestinians know this time of year as al-Arba’iniya; the 40 coldest and harshest days of winter, beginning in late December and continuing through 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 none of these. The cold bites through homes, streets are deserted and people just persevere.

But the threat posed by the cold is no longer abstract. On the Sunday morning before Christmas, recovery efforts 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 incidents are not new attacks, but the outcome of homes compromised after months of bombardment and finally undone by winter rain. Not long ago, a young child in Khan Younis died of exposure to the cold.

A Life in Tents

Observing the camp nearest my home, I observed the results up close. Inadequate coverings sagged under the weight of water, mattresses were adrift and clothes were perpetually moist, incapable of drying. Each step reinforced how vulnerable these tents are and how close the rain and cold came to taking life and health for hundreds of thousands living in tents and cramped refuges.

The majority of these individuals have already been displaced, many repeatedly. Homes are destroyed. Neighbourhoods razed. Winter has descended upon Gaza, but defense against it has not. It has come devoid of safe refuge, in darkness, without heating.

Students in the Storm

As a university lecturer in Gaza, this weather weighs heavily on me. My students are not distant names; they are faces I recognize; smart, persistent, but deeply weary. Most attend online classes from tents; others from cramped quarters where solitude is unattainable and connectivity sporadic. A significant number of pupils have already experienced bereavement. Most have seen their houses destroyed. Yet they persist in learning. Their perseverance is astounding, but it ought not be necessary in this way.

In Gaza, what would normally count as routine academic practices—tasks, schedules—transform into moral negotiations, dictated every moment by uncertainty about students’ well-being, comfort and proximity to protection.

When the storm rages, I find myself thinking about them. Are they dry? Are they warm? Could the storm have shredded through their shelter during the night? For those residing in apartments, or damaged structures, there is no heating. With electricity mostly absent and fuel scarce, warmth comes mainly from bundling up and using whatever blankets are left. Despite this, cold nights are unbearable. What about those living in tents?

Political Failure

Agencies state that more than a million people in Gaza exist in makeshift accommodations. Relief items, including thermal blankets, have been insufficient. When the cyclone hit, aid organizations reported distributing tarpaulins, tents and bedding to a multitude of people. In reality, however, this assistance was widely experienced as patchy and insufficient, limited to temporary solutions that did little against ongoing suffering to cold, wind and rain. Structures give way. Sicknesses, hypothermia, and infections linked to damp conditions are on the upswing.

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 critical supplies are hindered or postponed, while attempts to fix broken houses are consistently hampered. Grassroots projects have tried to find solutions, to hand out tarps, yet they remain limited by what is allowed to enter. The failure is political and humanitarian. Solutions exist, but are prevented from arriving.

A Preventable Suffering

What makes this suffering especially heartbreaking is how avoidable it could have been. 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 ruining their last notebook. Rain reveals just how fragile life has become. It tests bodies worn down by stress, exhaustion, and grief.

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