🔗 Share this article

The clock read around 8:30 PM on a weekday evening when I headed back home in Gaza City. The wind howled, forcing me inside any longer, so I had to walk. At first, it was just a gentle sprinkle, but following a brief walk the rain became a downpour. This was expected. I took shelter by a tent, trying to warm my hands to generate a little heat. A young boy was sitting outside selling sweet treats. We exchanged a few words during my pause, although he appeared disengaged. I noticed the cookies were hastily covered in plastic, dampened from the drizzle, and I wondered if he’d manage to sell them all before the night ended. A deep chill permeated the air.

A Walk Through a Landscape 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, merely the din of falling water and the roar of the wind. Rushing forward, attempting to avoid the rain, I activated my mobile phone's torch to light my way. My thoughts kept returning to those huddled within: How are they passing the time now? What are they thinking? How do they feel? It was bitterly cold. I pictured children curled under damp covers, parents shifting constantly to keep them warm.

As I unlocked the door to my apartment, the freezing handle served as a quiet but powerful reminder of the hardships endured across Gaza in these harsh winter conditions. I stepped inside my apartment and couldn't shake the guilt of enjoying a dry home when so many were exposed to the storm.

The Midnight Hour Intensifies

During the darkest hours, the storm intensified. Outside, tarps on broken panes billowed and tore, while metal sheets ripped free and fell with a clatter. Overriding the noise came the piercing, fearful cries of children, cutting through the darkness. I felt utterly powerless.

Over the past two weeks, the rain has been unending. Cold, heavy, and driven by strong winds, it has flooded makeshift homes, flooded makeshift camps and turned open ground into mud. Elsewhere, this might be called “poor conditions”. In Gaza, it is lived with exposure and abandonment.

The Harshest Days

Palestinians know this time of year as al-Arba’iniya; the 40 coldest and harshest days of winter, beginning in late December and persisting to the end of January. It is the real onset of winter, the moment when the season reveals its full force. Typically, it is weathered through preparation and shelter. Currently, Gaza has no such defenses. The frost seeps through homes, streets are vacant and people merely survive.

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 caused by ongoing hostilities, but the outcome of homes compromised after months of bombardment and finally undone by winter rain. Earlier this month, an infant in Khan Younis died of exposure to the cold.

Precarious Existence

Observing the camp nearest my home, I observed the results up close. Thin plastic sheets buckled beneath the weight of water, mattresses floated and clothes remained wet, always damp. Each step reminded me how fragile these shelters were and how close the rain and cold came to claiming life and health for a vast population living in tents and cramped refuges.

Most of these people have already been displaced, many repeatedly. Homes are gone. Neighbourhoods flattened. Winter has arrived in Gaza, but defense against it has not. It has come devoid of safe refuge, without electricity, devoid of warmth.

The Weight on Education

As a university lecturer in Gaza, this weather weighs heavily on me. My students are not figures in a report; they are young people I speak to; smart, persistent, but profoundly exhausted. Most join virtual lessons from tents; others from cramped quarters where personal space doesn't exist and connectivity unreliable. Countless learners have already experienced bereavement. Most have lost their homes. Yet they persist in learning. Their resilience is extraordinary, but it ought not be necessary in this way.

In Gaza, what would normally count as routine academic practices—tasks, schedules—become moral negotiations, shaped each day by concern for students’ safety, warmth and access to shelter.

During nights like these, I am constantly preoccupied about them. Are they dry? Are they warm? Did the wind tear through their shelter during the night? For those remaining in apartments, or what remains of them, there is a lack of heat. With electricity scarce and fuel in short supply, warmth comes primarily through bundling up and using any remaining covers. Despite this, cold nights are excruciating. What, then those living in tents?

Political Failure

Agencies state that over a million people in Gaza live in shelters. Relief items, including thermal blankets, have been insufficient. During the recent storm, humanitarian partners reported delivering plastic sheets, tents and mattresses to a multitude of people. In reality, however, this assistance was frequently felt to be uneven and inadequate, limited to short-term fixes that offered scant protection against prolonged exposure to cold, wind and rain. Structures give way. Respiratory illnesses, hypothermia, and infections associated with damp conditions are on the upswing.

This cannot be described as an unforeseen disaster. Winter comes every year. People in Gaza understand this failure not as misfortune, but as being forsaken. People speak of how essential materials are hindered or postponed, while attempts to reinforce weakened structures are consistently hampered. Local initiatives have tried to improvise, to hand out tarps, yet they remain limited by bureaucratic barriers. The root cause is political and humanitarian. Solutions exist, but are kept out.

An Unnecessary Pain

The factor that intensifies this hardship especially heartbreaking is how avoidable it could have been. It is unconscionable to study, raise children, or fight illness standing surrounded by cold water inside a tent. No learner should dread the rain ruining their last notebook. Rain reveals just how precarious existence is. It tests bodies worn down by pressure, weariness, and sorrow.

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