🔗 Share this article

The time was around 8:30 PM on a weekday evening when I made my way home in Gaza City. The wind howled, and I couldn’t stay out any longer, so I had to walk. In the beginning, it was only a light drizzle, but following a brief walk the rain intensified abruptly. It came as no shock. I took shelter by a tent, rubbing my palms together to draw some warmth. A young boy sat nearby selling baked goods. We shared brief remarks as I waited, but his attention was elsewhere. I observed the cookies were poorly packaged in plastic, moist from the drizzle, and I pondered if he’d find buyers before the night ended. The freezing temperature invaded every space.

A Journey Through a Place of Tents

While traversing al-Wehda Street in Gaza City, canvas structures flanked both sides of the road. No sounds of conversation came from inside them, just the noise of falling water and the roar of the wind. Rushing forward, trying to dodge the rain, I switched on my mobile phone's torch to see the road ahead. My thoughts kept returning to those huddled within: How are they passing the time now? What is their state of mind? What emotions do they hold? It was bitterly cold. I envisioned children huddled under soaked bedding, parents shifting constantly to keep them warm.

Upon opening the door to my apartment, the freezing handle served as a quiet but powerful reminder of the struggles borne across Gaza in these severe cold season. I stepped inside my apartment and felt consumed by the guilt of having a roof when so many were exposed to the storm.

The Night Escalates

In the middle of the night, the storm reached its peak. Outside, plastic sheeting on damaged glass billowed and tore, while metal sheets tore loose and fell with a clatter. Overriding the noise came the sharp, panicked screams of children, shattering the darkness. I felt completely helpless.

For the last fortnight, the rain has been unending. Freezing, pouring, and carried by strong winds, it has soaked tents, flooded makeshift camps and turned bare earth into mud. In different contexts, this might be called “bad weather”. In Gaza, it is lived with exposure and abandonment.

The Cruelest Season

Palestinians know this time of year as al-Arba’iniya; the fourty most severe 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 shows its true power. Normally, it is weathered through preparation and shelter. This year, Gaza has no such defenses. The chill penetrates through homes, streets are vacant and people merely survive.

But the threat posed by the cold is far from theoretical. Early on the Sunday before Christmas, recovery efforts found the victims of two children after the roof of a shelled home collapsed in northern Gaza, rescuing five others, including a child and two women. Two people have not been found. These incidents are not new attacks, but the result of homes damaged from months of bombardment and succumbing to winter rain. In recent days, a young child in Khan Younis passed away from exposure to the cold.

Precarious Existence

Passing by the camp nearest my home, I saw the consequences up close. Thin plastic sheets strained under the weight of water, mattresses floated and clothes were perpetually moist, incapable of drying. Each step reminded me how precarious these dwellings are and how close the rain and cold came to claiming life and health for hundreds of thousands living in tents and packed sanctuaries.

Most of these people have already been uprooted, many repeatedly. Homes are lost. Neighbourhoods flattened. Winter has arrived in Gaza, but defense against it has not. It has come lacking adequate housing, in darkness, without heating.

The Weight on Education

As a university lecturer in Gaza, this weather weighs heavily on me. My students are not distant names; they are faces I recognize; intelligent, determined, but extremely fatigued. Most attend online classes from tents; others from overcrowded shelters where privacy is impossible and connectivity unreliable. Countless learners have already suffered personal loss. Most have seen their houses destroyed. Yet they persist in learning. Their fortitude is remarkable, but it should not be required in this way.

In Gaza, what would typically constitute routine academic practices—tasks, schedules—become questions of conscience, dictated every moment by uncertainty about students’ security, heat and ability to find refuge.

On evenings such as this, I find myself thinking about them. Do they have dryness? Are they warm? Did the wind tear through their shelter during the night? For those still living in apartments, or the shells that are left, there is no heating. With electricity largely unavailable and fuel in short supply, warmth comes mostly via bundling up and using the few bedding items available. Even so, cold nights are intolerable. How then those living in tents?

Aid and Abandonment

Reports indicate that well over a million people in Gaza exist in makeshift accommodations. Relief items, including insulated tents, have been far from enough. When the cyclone hit, relief groups reported delivering coverings, shelters and sleeping materials to numerous households. For those affected, however, this assistance was frequently felt to be inconsistent and lacking, limited to temporary solutions that did little against ongoing suffering 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 understand this failure not as bad luck, but as neglect. People speak of how essential materials are restricted or delayed, while attempts to reinforce weakened structures are consistently hampered. Community efforts have tried to make do, to distribute plastic sheeting, yet they continue to be hampered by what is allowed to enter. The root cause is political and humanitarian. Solutions exist, but are prevented from arriving.

A Preventable Suffering

The aspect that renders this pain especially heartbreaking is how preventable it is. It is unconscionable to study, raise children, or combat disease standing knee-high in cold water inside a tent. It is wrong for a pupil to worry about the rain destroying their final textbook. Rain exposes just how vulnerable survival is. It strains physiques worn down by anxiety, fatigue, and loss.

The current cold season aligns with the Christmas season that, for millions, represents warmth, refuge and care for the disadvantaged. In Palestine, that {symbolism