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The clock read about 8:30 PM on a weekday evening when I made my way home in Gaza City. Gusts of wind blew, forcing me inside any longer, so walking was my only option. In the beginning, it was just a gentle sprinkle, but a short distance later the rain intensified abruptly. This was expected. I stopped near a tent, rubbing my palms together to generate a little heat. A young boy was sitting outside selling baked goods. We exchanged a few words during my pause, although he appeared disengaged. I saw the cookies were poorly packaged in plastic, dampened from the drizzle, and I questioned if he’d have enough to sell before the night ended. The cold seeped into everything.

A Walk Through a City of Tents

Walking down 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 moan of the wind. As I hurried on, trying to dodge the rain, I switched on my mobile phone's torch to illuminate the path. I couldn't stop thinking to those huddled within: How are they passing the time now? What are they thinking? How do they feel? The cold was piercing. I pictured children curled 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 suffering faced across Gaza in these severe cold season. I walked into my apartment and was overwhelmed by the guilt of possessing shelter when a multitude remained unprotected to the storm.

The Night Worsens

As midnight passed, the storm intensified. Outside, makeshift covers on shattered windows billowed and tore, while corrugated metal broke away and slammed down. Cutting through the chaos came the desperate, terrified shouts of children, piercing the darkness. I felt totally incapable.

For the last fortnight, the rain has been relentless. Freezing, pouring, and carried by strong winds, it has drenched shelters, flooded makeshift camps and turned bare earth into mud. Elsewhere, this might be called “poor conditions”. In Gaza, it is endured in a state of 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, starting from late December and continuing through the end of January. It is the real onset of winter, the moment when the season reveals its full force. Typically, it is faced with preparation and shelter. This year, Gaza has neither. The frost seeps through homes, streets are deserted and people simply endure.

But the peril of the season is now very real. On the Sunday morning before Christmas, rescue operations 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 have not been found. These incidents are not caused by ongoing hostilities, but the result of homes compromised after months of bombardment and finally undone by winter rain. In recent days, an eight-month-old baby girl in Khan Younis died of exposure to the cold.

A Life in Tents

Walking past the camp nearest my home, I saw the consequences up close. Thin plastic sheets strained under the weight of water, mattresses were adrift and clothes remained wet, never fully drying. Each step reinforced how vulnerable these tents are and how close the rain and cold came to taking life and health for countless individuals living in tents and overcrowded shelters.

The majority of these individuals have already been displaced, many several times over. Homes are destroyed. Neighbourhoods leveled. Winter has arrived in Gaza, but defense against it has not. It has come lacking adequate housing, without electricity, lacking heat.

A Teacher's Anguish

Being an educator in Gaza, this weather causes deep concern. My students are not figures in a report; they are individuals I know; intelligent, determined, but profoundly exhausted. Most join virtual lessons from tents; others from packed rooms where solitude is unattainable and connectivity unreliable. Countless learners have already suffered personal loss. Most have seen their houses destroyed. Yet they still try to study. Their fortitude is remarkable, but it ought not be necessary in this way.

In Gaza, what would typically constitute routine academic practices—assignments, deadlines—become ethical dilemmas, shaped each day by concern for students’ safety, warmth and proximity to protection.

On evenings such as this, I find myself thinking about them. Are they dry? Is there heat? Could the storm have shredded through their shelter as they attempted to rest? For those remaining in apartments, or what remains of them, there is an absence of warmth. With electricity mostly absent and fuel rare, warmth comes mostly via bundling up and using the few bedding items available. Even so, cold nights are excruciating. How then those living in tents?

Political Failure

Reports indicate that well over a million people in Gaza reside in temporary housing. Aid supplies, including weatherproof shelters, have been insufficient. During the recent storm, aid organizations reported distributing tarpaulins, tents and bedding to thousands of families. For those affected, however, this assistance was widely experienced as inconsistent and lacking, limited to band-aid measures that were largely ineffective against extended hardship to cold, wind and rain. Tents collapse. Respiratory illnesses, hypothermia, and infections associated with damp conditions are increasing.

This cannot be described as an surprise calamity. Winter arrives cyclically. People in Gaza interpret this shortcoming not as bad luck, but as being forsaken. People speak of how critical supplies are restricted or delayed, while attempts to repair damaged homes are repeatedly obstructed. Local initiatives have tried to improvise, to distribute plastic sheeting, yet they continue to be hampered by bureaucratic barriers. The root cause is political and humanitarian. Solutions exist, but are kept out.

A Symbolic Season

The factor that intensifies this hardship especially agonizing is how preventable it is. No individual ought to study, raise children, or combat disease 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 precarious existence is. It strains physiques worn down by stress, exhaustion, and grief.

This year's chill aligns with the Christmas season that, for millions, symbolises warmth, refuge and care for the most vulnerable. In Palestine, that {symbolism