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It was about 8:30 PM on a Thursday when I made my way home in Gaza City. Gusts of wind blew, making it impossible to remain any longer, so I had to walk. Initially, it was only a light drizzle, but a short distance later the rain suddenly grew heavier. That wasn’t surprising. I took shelter by a tent, rubbing my palms together to draw some warmth. A young boy was sitting outside selling sweet treats. We spoke briefly while I stood there, but his attention was elsewhere. I saw the cookies were hastily covered in plastic, moist from the drizzle, and I questioned if he’d manage to sell them all before the night ended. The cold seeped into everything.

A Walk Through a Landscape of Tents

While traversing al-Wehda Street in Gaza City, makeshift shelters crowded both sides of the road. An eerie silence replaced voices from inside them, only the sound of rain pouring down and the moan of the wind. Rushing forward, attempting to avoid the rain, I activated my mobile phone's torch to see the road ahead. My thoughts kept returning to those taking refuge within: What are they doing now? What is their state of mind? What emotions do they hold? The cold was piercing. I envisioned children huddled under damp covers, parents shifting constantly to keep them warm.

When I opened the door to my apartment, the icy doorknob served as a subtle yet haunting reminder of the suffering faced across Gaza in these harsh winter conditions. I stepped inside my apartment and was overwhelmed by the guilt of possessing shelter when a multitude remained unprotected to the storm.

The Darkness Escalates

As midnight passed, the storm reached its peak. Outside, plastic sheeting on broken panes whipped and strained, while corrugated metal broke away and crashed to the ground. Above it all came the desperate, terrified shouts of children, shattering the darkness. I felt totally incapable.

Over the past two weeks, the rain has been incessant. Cold, heavy, and driven by strong winds, it has flooded makeshift homes, flooded makeshift camps and turned the soil into mud. In other places, this might be called “poor conditions”. In Gaza, it is endured in a state of exposure and abandonment.

The Harshest Days

Residents refer to this time of year as al-Arba’iniya; the 40 coldest and harshest days of winter, commencing in late December and persisting to the end of January. It is the definite start of winter, the moment when the season reveals its full force. Ordinarily, it is endured with preparation and shelter. This year, Gaza has neither. The chill penetrates 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, rescue operations recovered the bodies of two children after the roof of a shelled home collapsed in northern Gaza, freeing five additional individuals, including a child and two women. Two people have not been found. Such collapses are not caused by ongoing hostilities, but the result of homes weakened by months of bombardment and ultimately defeated by winter rain. Earlier this month, an eight-month-old baby girl in Khan Younis died of exposure to the cold.

Fragile Shelters

Passing by the camp nearest my home, I witnessed the impact up close. Thin plastic sheets sagged under the weight of water, mattresses bobbed in water and clothes were perpetually moist, incapable of drying. Each step reminded me how vulnerable these tents are and how close the rain and cold came to claiming life and health for countless individuals living in tents and cramped refuges.

The majority of these individuals have already been uprooted, many on multiple occasions. Homes are gone. Neighbourhoods razed. Winter has come to Gaza, but protection from it has not. It has come lacking adequate housing, in darkness, lacking heat.

Students in the Storm

As a university lecturer 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 participate in digital sessions from tents; others from cramped quarters where privacy is impossible and connectivity unreliable. Many of my students have already experienced bereavement. Most have lost their homes. 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—transform into questions of conscience, dictated every moment by concern for students’ well-being, comfort and ability to find refuge.

When the storm rages, I find myself thinking about them. Is their shelter holding? Is there heat? Could the storm have shredded through their shelter during the night? For those residing in apartments, or what remains of them, there is no heating. With electricity largely unavailable and fuel in short supply, warmth comes primarily through wearing multiple layers and using any remaining covers. Nonetheless, cold nights are excruciating. How then those living in tents?

Political Failure

Reports indicate that over a million people in Gaza reside in temporary housing. Aid supplies, including thermal blankets, have been inadequate. When the cyclone hit, relief groups reported providing coverings, shelters and sleeping materials to thousands of families. In reality, however, this assistance was frequently felt to be inconsistent and lacking, limited to band-aid measures that offered scant protection against ongoing suffering to cold, wind and rain. Shelters fail. Chest infections, hypothermia, and infections associated with damp conditions are rising.

This cannot be described as an unforeseen disaster. Winter is an annual event. People in Gaza understand this failure not as bad luck, but as abandonment. People speak of how necessary items are restricted or delayed, while attempts to fix broken houses are consistently hampered. Community efforts have tried to find solutions, 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.

A Symbolic Season

What makes this suffering especially agonizing is how unnecessary it should be. No one should have to study, raise children, or combat disease standing knee-high in cold water inside a tent. No learner should dread 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 winter occurs alongside the Christmas season that, for millions, represents warmth, refuge and care for the neediest. In Palestine, that {symbolism