🔗 Share this article

It was around 8:30 PM on a weekday evening when I made my way home in Gaza City. A strong wind was blowing, making it impossible to remain any longer, leaving me to walk. In the beginning, it was only a light drizzle, but a short distance later the rain suddenly grew heavier. It came as no shock. I took shelter by a tent, trying to warm my hands to fight off the chill. A young boy had positioned himself selling sweet treats. We spoke briefly as I waited, although he appeared disengaged. I observed the cookies were hastily covered in plastic, already soggy from the drizzle, and I questioned if he’d manage to sell them all before the night ended. A deep chill permeated the air.

A Journey Through a Place of Tents

While traversing al-Wehda Street in Gaza City, tents lined both sides of the road. There were no voices from inside them, merely the din of falling water and the roar of the wind. As I hurried on, trying to dodge the rain, I activated my mobile phone's torch to see the road ahead. I couldn't stop thinking to those taking refuge within: How are they passing the time now? What thoughts fill their minds? How do they feel? The cold was piercing. I imagined children huddled under damp covers, 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 harsh winter conditions. I stepped inside my apartment and felt consumed by the guilt of possessing shelter when countless others faced exposure to the storm.

The Night Worsens

As midnight passed, the storm reached its peak. Outside, makeshift covers on shattered windows whipped and strained, while corrugated metal tore loose and crashed to the ground. Overriding the noise came the sharp, panicked screams of children, cutting through the darkness. I felt totally incapable.

During recent days, the rain has been incessant. Cold, heavy, and driven by strong winds, it has drenched shelters, flooded makeshift camps and turned open ground into mud. In other places, this might be called “bad weather”. In Gaza, it is lived with exposure and abandonment.

Al-Arba’iniya

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 shows its true power. Normally, it is endured with preparation and shelter. Now, Gaza has no such defenses. The frost seeps through homes, streets are deserted and people merely survive.

But the threat posed by the cold is far from theoretical. Early on the Sunday before Christmas, civil defense teams 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 remain missing. These incidents are not the result of fresh strikes, but the outcome of homes compromised after months of bombardment and ultimately defeated by winter rain. Not long ago, a young child in Khan Younis passed away from exposure to the cold.

A Life in Tents

Walking past the camp nearest my home, I saw the consequences up close. Inadequate coverings sagged under the weight of water, mattresses were adrift and clothes were perpetually moist, always damp. Each step reinforced how fragile these shelters were and how close the rain and cold came to claiming life and health for hundreds of thousands living in tents and packed sanctuaries.

The majority of these individuals have already been displaced, many several times over. Homes are lost. Neighbourhoods razed. Winter has arrived in Gaza, but protection from it has not. It has come without proper shelter, in darkness, without heating.

The Weight on Education

In my role as a professor in Gaza, this weather causes deep concern. My students are not figures in a report; they are individuals I know; intelligent, determined, but deeply weary. Most join virtual lessons from tents; others from overcrowded shelters where privacy is impossible and connectivity intermittent. Countless learners have already suffered personal loss. Most have been rendered homeless. Yet they still try to study. Their fortitude is remarkable, but it should not be required in this way.

In Gaza, what would typically constitute routine academic practices—assignments, deadlines—turn into ethical dilemmas, influenced daily 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? Do they feel any warmth? Did the wind tear through their shelter as they attempted to rest? For those residing in apartments, or damaged structures, there is a lack of heat. With electricity largely unavailable and fuel scarce, warmth comes mainly from wearing multiple layers and using any remaining covers. Even so, cold nights are excruciating. How then those living in tents?

Political Failure

Agencies state that over a million people in Gaza live in shelters. Relief items, including insulated tents, have been insufficient. Amid the last tempest, relief groups reported delivering tarpaulins, tents and bedding to numerous households. On the ground, however, this assistance was frequently felt to be inconsistent and lacking, limited to temporary solutions that were largely ineffective against ongoing suffering to cold, wind and rain. Shelters fail. Respiratory illnesses, hypothermia, and infections associated with damp conditions are rising.

This goes beyond an unexpected catastrophe. Winter arrives cyclically. People in Gaza interpret this shortcoming not as bad luck, but as abandonment. People speak of how essential materials are restricted or delayed, while attempts to repair damaged homes are repeatedly obstructed. Local initiatives have tried to make do, to provide coverings, yet they remain limited by restrictions on imports. The root cause is political and humanitarian. Solutions exist, but are prevented from arriving.

A Preventable Suffering

The aspect that renders this pain especially agonizing is how avoidable it could have been. No one should have to study, raise children, or fight illness standing ankle-deep in cold water inside a tent. No student should fear the rain ruining their last notebook. Rain lays bare just how precarious existence is. It tests bodies worn down by anxiety, fatigue, and loss.

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