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The clock read approximately 8:30 PM on a weekday evening when I headed back home in Gaza City. Gusts of wind blew, forcing me inside any longer, so I had to walk. Initially, it was just a gentle sprinkle, but after about 200 metres the rain suddenly grew heavier. This was expected. I paused beside a tent, trying to warm my hands to fight off the chill. A young boy was sitting outside selling baked goods. We exchanged a few words during my pause, but his attention was elsewhere. I saw the cookies were poorly packaged in plastic, already soggy from the drizzle, and I questioned if he’d find buyers before the night ended. The freezing temperature invaded every space.

A Trek Through a Landscape of Tents

As I walked along 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 torrential rain and the roar of the wind. Rushing forward, seeking escape from the rain, I activated my mobile phone's torch to see the road ahead. My thoughts kept returning to those taking refuge within: How are they passing the time now? What are they thinking? What emotions do they hold? A severe chill gripped the air. I pictured children nestled under wet blankets, parents moving restlessly to keep them warm.

Upon opening the door to my apartment, the icy doorknob served as a subtle yet haunting reminder of the suffering faced across Gaza in these brutal winter climate. I entered my apartment and felt consumed by the guilt of possessing shelter when so many were exposed to the storm.

The Night Intensifies

As midnight passed, the storm grew stronger. Outside, tarps on damaged glass billowed and tore, while corrugated metal ripped free and crashed to the ground. Overriding the noise came the piercing, fearful cries of children, piercing the darkness. I felt totally incapable.

During recent days, the rain has been relentless. Chilly, dense, and propelled by strong winds, it has drenched shelters, flooded makeshift camps and turned open ground into mud. Elsewhere, this might be called “inclement weather”. In Gaza, it is lived with exposure and abandonment.

The Cruelest Season

Locals call this time of year as al-Arba’iniya; the most bitter forty days of winter, commencing in late December and continuing through the end of January. It is the definite start of winter, the moment when the season unleashes its intensity. Ordinarily, it is endured with preparation and shelter. Currently, Gaza has none of these. The cold bites 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, 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 structural failures are not new attacks, but the result of homes weakened by months of bombardment and succumbing to winter rain. Not long ago, an infant in Khan Younis succumbed to exposure to the cold.

Fragile Shelters

Walking past the camp nearest my home, I saw the consequences up close. Flimsy tarpaulins sagged under the weight of water, mattresses floated and clothes were perpetually moist, never fully 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 overcrowded shelters.

The majority of these individuals have already been displaced, many several times over. Homes are gone. Neighbourhoods razed. Winter has come to Gaza, but shelter from its fury has not. It has come without proper shelter, without electricity, lacking heat.

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 faces I recognize; intelligent, determined, but profoundly exhausted. Most join virtual lessons from tents; others from overcrowded shelters where personal space doesn't exist and connectivity intermittent. Many of my students have already experienced bereavement. Most have been rendered homeless. Yet they continue their education. Their perseverance is astounding, but it ought not be necessary in this way.

In Gaza, what would normally count as routine academic practices—assignments, deadlines—transform into questions of conscience, dictated every moment by uncertainty about students’ security, heat and access to shelter.

When the storm rages, I find myself thinking about them. Are they dry? Do they feel any warmth? Could the storm have shredded through their shelter during the night? For those remaining in apartments, or the shells that are left, there is a lack of heat. With electricity scarce and fuel scarce, warmth comes primarily through bundling up and using any remaining covers. Even so, cold nights are unbearable. What about those living in tents?

Aid and Abandonment

Agencies state that well over a million people in Gaza live in shelters. Relief items, including thermal blankets, have been insufficient. When the cyclone hit, relief groups reported delivering coverings, shelters and sleeping materials to numerous households. On the ground, however, this assistance was frequently felt to be patchy and insufficient, limited to temporary solutions that did little against ongoing suffering to cold, wind and rain. Tents collapse. Sicknesses, hypothermia, and infections associated with damp conditions are increasing.

This goes beyond an surprise calamity. Winter comes every year. People in Gaza view this crisis not as misfortune, but as abandonment. People speak of how essential materials are restricted or delayed, while attempts to repair damaged homes are consistently hampered. Grassroots projects have tried to improvise, to hand out tarps, yet they are still constrained by restrictions on imports. The culpability lies in political and humanitarian. Solutions exist, but are kept out.

A Preventable Suffering

What makes this suffering especially agonizing is how unnecessary it should be. No one should have to study, raise children, or battle sickness standing surrounded by cold water inside a tent. No student should fear the rain damaging their precious phone. Rain reveals just how precarious existence is. It strains physiques worn down by anxiety, fatigue, and loss.

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