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The time was around 8:30 PM on a weekday evening when I returned home in Gaza City. Gusts of wind blew, and I couldn’t stay out any longer, leaving me to walk. In the beginning, it was just a gentle sprinkle, but following a brief walk the rain became a downpour. It came as no shock. I took shelter by a tent, rubbing my palms together to generate a little heat. A young boy had positioned himself selling homemade cookies. We exchanged a few words during my pause, though he didn’t seem interested. I observed the cookies were poorly packaged in plastic, moist from the drizzle, and I wondered if he’d have enough to sell before the night ended. A deep chill permeated the air.

A Trek Through a Place of Tents

As I walked along al-Wehda Street in Gaza City, canvas structures flanked both sides of the road. There were no voices from inside them, merely the din of rain pouring down and the whistle of the wind. Quickening my pace, trying to dodge the rain, I activated my mobile phone's torch to illuminate the path. I couldn't stop thinking to those taking refuge within: What are they doing now? What thoughts fill their minds? What are they experiencing? It was bitterly cold. I pictured children huddled under soaked bedding, parents shifting constantly to keep them warm.

Upon opening the door to my apartment, the icy doorknob served as a understated yet stark reminder of the hardships endured across Gaza in these brutal winter climate. I stepped inside my apartment and was overwhelmed by the guilt of possessing shelter when so many were exposed to the storm.

The Midnight Hour Worsens

In the middle of the night, the storm reached its peak. Outside, plastic sheeting on damaged glass billowed and tore, while tin roofing tore loose and fell with a clatter. Above it all came the sharp, panicked screams of children, piercing the darkness. I felt utterly powerless.

For the last fortnight, 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. Elsewhere, this might be called “inclement weather”. In Gaza, it is lived with exposure and abandonment.

Al-Arba’iniya

Palestinians know this time of year as al-Arba’iniya; the 40 coldest and harshest days of winter, commencing in late December and persisting to the end of January. It is the definite start of winter, the moment when the season unleashes its intensity. Normally, it is weathered through preparation and shelter. Now, Gaza has no such defenses. The chill penetrates through homes, streets are deserted and people merely survive.

But the danger of winter is no longer abstract. In the early hours of Sunday before Christmas, recovery efforts retrieved the remains 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 remain missing. Such collapses are not the result of fresh strikes, but the outcome of homes damaged from months of bombardment and succumbing to winter rain. Earlier this month, an eight-month-old baby girl in Khan Younis succumbed to exposure to the cold.

A Life in Tents

Walking past the camp nearest my home, I saw the consequences up close. Thin plastic sheets buckled beneath the weight of water, mattresses bobbed in water and clothes hung damply, always damp. Each step reminded me how precarious these dwellings are and how close the rain and cold came to claiming life and health for a vast population living in tents and packed sanctuaries.

Most of these people have already been displaced, many several times over. Homes are destroyed. Neighbourhoods flattened. Winter has come to Gaza, but protection from it has not. It has come lacking adequate housing, in darkness, lacking heat.

The Weight on Education

In my role as a professor in Gaza, this weather is a heavy burden. My students are not mere statistics; they are young people I speak to; smart, persistent, but profoundly exhausted. Most join virtual lessons from tents; others from overcrowded shelters where privacy is impossible and connectivity intermittent. Countless learners have already suffered personal loss. Most have been rendered homeless. Yet they continue their education. Their perseverance is astounding, but it should not be required in this way.

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

On evenings such as this, I am constantly preoccupied about them. Do they have dryness? Are they warm? Did the wind tear through their shelter while they were trying to sleep? For those still living in apartments, or what remains of them, there is a lack of heat. With electricity mostly absent and fuel rare, warmth comes primarily through donning extra clothing and using any remaining covers. Nonetheless, cold nights are excruciating. How then those living in tents?

The Humanitarian Shortfall

Agencies state that well over a million people in Gaza reside in temporary housing. Aid supplies, including thermal blankets, have been far from enough. When the cyclone hit, aid organizations reported distributing plastic sheets, tents and mattresses to numerous households. On the ground, however, this assistance was widely experienced as inconsistent and lacking, limited to band-aid measures that offered scant protection against extended hardship to cold, wind and rain. Shelters fail. Sicknesses, hypothermia, and infections associated with damp conditions are rising.

This cannot be described as an surprise calamity. Winter is an annual event. People in Gaza interpret this shortcoming not as misfortune, but as neglect. People speak of how critical supplies are restricted or delayed, while attempts to fix broken houses are frequently blocked. Grassroots projects have tried to make do, to distribute plastic sheeting, yet they are still constrained by restrictions on imports. The failure is political and humanitarian. Solutions exist, but are kept out.

An Unnecessary Pain

What makes this suffering especially painful 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 lays bare just how fragile life has become. It strains physiques worn down by stress, exhaustion, and grief.

This winter occurs alongside the Christmas season that, for millions, symbolises warmth, refuge and care for the neediest. In Palestine, that {symbolism