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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, and I couldn’t stay out any longer, leaving me to walk. Initially, it was merely a soft rain, but a short distance later the rain became a downpour. This was expected. I took shelter by a tent, clapping my hands to fight off the chill. A young boy sat nearby selling baked goods. We shared brief remarks while I stood there, but his attention was elsewhere. I saw the cookies were hastily covered in plastic, dampened from the drizzle, and I questioned if he’d manage to sell them all before the night ended. The cold seeped into everything.

A Trek Through a Landscape of Tents

Walking down al-Wehda Street in Gaza City, tents lined both sides of the road. No sounds of conversation came from inside them, merely the din of rain pouring down and the moan of the wind. Rushing forward, trying to dodge the rain, I turned on my mobile phone's torch to illuminate the path. My thoughts kept returning to those sheltering inside: What are they doing now? What are they thinking? What emotions do they hold? A severe chill gripped the air. I pictured children curled under damp covers, parents moving restlessly to keep them warm.

As I unlocked 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 having a roof when a multitude remained unprotected to the storm.

The Darkness Intensifies

During the darkest hours, the storm reached its peak. Outside, tarps on broken panes whipped and strained, while corrugated metal broke away and crashed to the ground. Cutting through the chaos came the piercing, fearful cries of children, piercing the darkness. I felt utterly powerless.

During recent days, the rain has been unending. Cold, heavy, and driven by strong winds, it has flooded makeshift homes, swamped refugee areas and turned the soil into mud. Elsewhere, this might be called “inclement weather”. In Gaza, it is experienced amidst exposure and abandonment.

The Harshest Days

Palestinians know this time of year as al-Arba’iniya; the most bitter forty days of winter, commencing in late December and lasting until the end of January. It is the definite start of winter, the moment when the season reveals its full force. Typically, it is weathered through preparation and shelter. Now, Gaza has no such defenses. 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 found the victims of two children after the roof of a war-damaged building collapsed in northern Gaza, freeing five additional individuals, including a child and two women. Two people have not been found. These incidents are not the result of fresh strikes, but the result 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.

Precarious Existence

Passing by the camp nearest my home, I observed the results up close. Flimsy tarpaulins sagged under the weight of water, mattresses floated and clothes were perpetually moist, always damp. Each step reminded me how precarious these dwellings are and how close the rain and cold threatened 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 gone. Neighbourhoods leveled. Winter has arrived in Gaza, but shelter from its fury has not. It has come lacking adequate housing, in darkness, lacking heat.

The Weight on Education

Being an educator in Gaza, this weather causes deep concern. My students are not figures in a report; they are faces I recognize; bright, resilient, but deeply weary. Most attend online classes from tents; others from overcrowded shelters where privacy is impossible and connectivity unreliable. Countless learners have already lost family members. Most have lost their homes. Yet they continue their education. Their perseverance is astounding, but it ought not be necessary in this way.

In Gaza, what would typically constitute routine academic practices—assignments, deadlines—become ethical dilemmas, dictated every moment by uncertainty about students’ security, heat and access to shelter.

When the storm rages, I am constantly preoccupied about them. Do they have dryness? Are they warm? Could the storm have shredded through their shelter as they attempted to rest? For those still living in apartments, or what remains of them, there is no heating. With electricity mostly absent and fuel scarce, warmth comes primarily through wearing multiple layers and using whatever blankets are left. Nonetheless, cold nights are intolerable. How then those living in tents?

The Humanitarian Shortfall

Agencies state that well over a million people in Gaza live in shelters. Relief items, including thermal blankets, have been inadequate. Amid the last tempest, humanitarian partners reported distributing tarpaulins, tents and bedding to a multitude of people. On the ground, however, this assistance was often perceived as uneven and inadequate, limited to band-aid measures that did little against prolonged exposure to cold, wind and rain. Shelters fail. Respiratory illnesses, hypothermia, and infections linked to damp conditions are on the upswing.

This goes beyond an unexpected catastrophe. Winter comes every year. People in Gaza interpret this shortcoming not as fate, but as being forsaken. People speak of how necessary items are blocked or slowed, while attempts to fix broken houses are frequently blocked. Community efforts have tried to improvise, to provide coverings, yet they are still constrained by what is allowed to enter. The root cause is political and humanitarian. Solutions exist, but are kept out.

An Unnecessary Pain

The factor that intensifies this hardship especially painful is how unnecessary it should be. No individual ought to study, raise children, or combat disease standing surrounded by cold water inside a tent. No learner should dread the rain destroying their final textbook. Rain exposes just how precarious existence is. It strains physiques worn down by anxiety, fatigue, and loss.

The current cold season occurs alongside the Christmas season that, for millions, epitomizes warmth, refuge and care for the most vulnerable. In Palestine, that {symbolism