🔗 Share this article

It was around 8:30 PM on a weekday evening when I headed back home in Gaza City. A strong wind was blowing, and I couldn’t stay out any longer, leaving me to walk. In the beginning, it was merely a soft rain, but a short distance later the rain suddenly grew heavier. That wasn’t surprising. I took shelter by a tent, clapping my hands to draw some warmth. A young boy sat nearby selling sweet treats. We spoke briefly during my pause, though he didn’t seem interested. I saw the cookies were poorly packaged in plastic, already soggy from the drizzle, and I questioned if he’d have enough to sell before the night ended. The freezing temperature invaded every space.

A Walk Through a Place of Tents

As I walked along al-Wehda Street in Gaza City, canvas structures flanked both sides of the road. An eerie silence replaced voices from inside them, only the sound of rain pouring down and the roar of the wind. Rushing forward, attempting to avoid the rain, I activated my mobile phone's torch to see the road ahead. My mind continually drifted to those taking refuge within: What occupies them now? What thoughts fill their minds? What emotions do they hold? A severe chill gripped the air. I pictured children nestled under damp covers, parents shifting constantly to keep them warm.

When I opened the door to my apartment, the cold metal served as a understated yet stark reminder of the hardships endured across Gaza in these severe cold season. I stepped inside my apartment and was overwhelmed by the guilt of having a roof when a multitude remained unprotected to the storm.

The Midnight Hour Escalates

In the middle of the night, the storm reached its peak. Outside, makeshift covers on damaged glass whipped and strained, while corrugated metal broke away and slammed down. Overriding the noise came the desperate, terrified shouts of children, shattering the darkness. I felt totally incapable.

For the last fortnight, the rain has been unending. Cold, heavy, and driven by strong winds, it has flooded makeshift homes, flooded makeshift camps and turned the soil into mud. Elsewhere, this might be called “poor conditions”. In Gaza, it is lived with exposure and abandonment.

The Cruelest Season

Residents refer to this time of year as al-Arba’iniya; the 40 coldest and harshest days of winter, commencing in late December and continuing through the end of January. It is the true beginning of winter, the moment when the season shows its true power. Normally, it is weathered through preparation and shelter. Now, Gaza has none of these. The frost seeps through homes, streets are vacant and people simply endure.

But the peril of the season 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 war-damaged building collapsed in northern Gaza, freeing five additional individuals, including a child and two women. Two people are still unaccounted for. These incidents are not caused by ongoing hostilities, but the outcome of homes compromised after months of bombardment and ultimately defeated by winter rain. In recent days, an eight-month-old baby girl in Khan Younis passed away from exposure to the cold.

Precarious Existence

Observing the camp nearest my home, I witnessed the impact up close. Inadequate coverings sagged under the weight of water, mattresses floated and clothes hung damply, 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 a vast population living in tents and overcrowded shelters.

Most of these people have already been displaced, many repeatedly. Homes are lost. Neighbourhoods razed. Winter has descended upon Gaza, but shelter from its fury has not. It has come without proper shelter, without electricity, lacking heat.

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 faces I recognize; intelligent, determined, but deeply weary. Most attend online classes from tents; others from overcrowded shelters where solitude is unattainable and connectivity unreliable. Many of my students have already suffered personal loss. Most have seen their houses destroyed. Yet they still try to study. Their perseverance is astounding, but it should not be required in this way.

In Gaza, what would usually be routine academic practices—assignments, deadlines—become moral negotiations, influenced daily by uncertainty about students’ well-being, comfort and proximity to protection.

During nights like these, I find myself thinking about them. Do they have dryness? Do they feel any warmth? Has the gale ripped through their shelter as they attempted to rest? For those still living in apartments, or the shells that are left, there is an absence of warmth. With electricity largely unavailable and fuel rare, warmth comes mainly from donning extra clothing and using any remaining covers. Even so, cold nights are excruciating. What, then those living in tents?

Aid and Abandonment

Reports indicate that more than a million people in Gaza exist in makeshift accommodations. Aid supplies, including weatherproof shelters, have been inadequate. Amid the last tempest, relief groups reported delivering plastic sheets, tents and mattresses to a multitude of people. In reality, however, this assistance was widely experienced as inconsistent and lacking, limited to short-term fixes that did little against ongoing suffering to cold, wind and rain. Structures give way. Chest infections, hypothermia, and infections linked to damp conditions are on the upswing.

This goes beyond an unexpected catastrophe. Winter arrives cyclically. People in Gaza interpret this shortcoming not as fate, but as being forsaken. People speak of how critical supplies are hindered or postponed, while attempts to repair damaged homes are consistently hampered. Local initiatives have tried to find solutions, to distribute plastic sheeting, yet they remain limited by restrictions on imports. The culpability lies in political and humanitarian. Remedies are known, but are prevented from arriving.

A Symbolic Season

The factor that intensifies this hardship especially agonizing is how avoidable it could have been. No individual ought 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 challenges health worn down by pressure, weariness, and sorrow.

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