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The time was around 8:30 PM on a weekday evening 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. In the beginning, it was only a light drizzle, but a short distance later the rain became a downpour. That wasn’t surprising. I paused beside a tent, clapping my hands to fight off the chill. A young boy sat nearby selling baked goods. We shared brief remarks while I stood there, although he appeared disengaged. I observed the cookies were poorly packaged in plastic, already soggy from the drizzle, and I wondered if he’d manage to sell them all before the night ended. The freezing temperature invaded every space.

A Trek Through a City of Tents

As I walked along al-Wehda Street in Gaza City, makeshift shelters crowded both sides of the road. There were no voices from inside them, merely the din of torrential rain and the roar of the wind. Rushing forward, seeking escape from the rain, I switched on my mobile phone's torch to light my way. I couldn't stop thinking to those sheltering inside: What are they doing now? What is their state of mind? What emotions do they hold? The cold was piercing. I envisioned children curled under wet blankets, parents adjusting repeatedly to keep them warm.

As I unlocked the door to my apartment, the freezing handle served as a understated yet stark reminder of the struggles borne across Gaza in these severe cold season. I walked into my apartment and was overwhelmed by the guilt of enjoying a dry home when countless others faced exposure to the storm.

The Night Worsens

During the darkest hours, the storm reached its peak. Outside, plastic sheeting on shattered windows sagged and flapped violently, while corrugated metal ripped free and crashed to the ground. Cutting through the chaos came the sharp, panicked screams of children, piercing the darkness. I felt totally incapable.

During recent days, the rain has been unending. Cold, heavy, and driven by strong winds, it has flooded makeshift homes, swamped refugee areas and turned the soil into mud. Elsewhere, this might be called “poor conditions”. 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, beginning in late December and lasting until the end of January. It is the real onset of winter, the moment when the season unleashes its intensity. Typically, it is faced with preparation and shelter. Currently, Gaza has no such defenses. The chill penetrates through homes, streets are deserted and people merely survive.

But the peril of the season is no longer abstract. On the Sunday morning before Christmas, civil defense teams retrieved the remains of two children after the roof of a shelled home collapsed in northern Gaza, saving five more people, including a child and two women. Two people remain missing. Such collapses are not new attacks, but the consequence of homes compromised after months of bombardment and ultimately defeated by winter rain. In recent days, a young child in Khan Younis died of exposure to the cold.

A Life in Tents

Passing by the camp nearest my home, I observed the results up close. Inadequate coverings strained under the weight of water, mattresses floated and clothes hung damply, incapable of drying. Each step reinforced how precarious these dwellings are and how close the rain and cold came to taking life and health for hundreds of thousands living in tents and overcrowded shelters.

The majority of these individuals have already been forced from their homes, many repeatedly. Homes are gone. Neighbourhoods leveled. Winter has arrived in Gaza, but defense against it has not. It has come devoid of safe refuge, in darkness, without heating.

The Weight on Education

In my role as a professor in Gaza, this weather is a heavy burden. My students are not figures in a report; they are faces I recognize; intelligent, determined, but extremely fatigued. Most join virtual lessons from tents; others from packed rooms where personal space doesn't exist and connectivity unreliable. Countless learners have already suffered personal loss. Most have been rendered homeless. Yet they still try to study. Their perseverance is astounding, but it should not be required in this way.

In Gaza, what would typically constitute routine academic practices—tasks, schedules—transform into ethical dilemmas, influenced daily by concern for students’ security, heat and proximity to protection.

During nights like these, I cannot help but wonder about them. Is their shelter holding? Are they warm? Did the wind tear through their shelter as they attempted to rest? For those residing in apartments, or what remains of them, there is no heating. With electricity largely unavailable and fuel scarce, warmth comes mostly via wearing multiple layers and using the few bedding items available. Nonetheless, cold nights are excruciating. What about those living in tents?

Aid and Abandonment

Agencies state that well over a million people in Gaza live in shelters. Humanitarian assistance, including insulated tents, have been inadequate. When the cyclone hit, relief groups reported delivering tarpaulins, tents and bedding to numerous households. In reality, however, this assistance was widely experienced as patchy and insufficient, limited to band-aid measures that offered scant protection against prolonged exposure to cold, wind and rain. Structures give way. Sicknesses, hypothermia, and infections associated with damp conditions are rising.

This goes beyond an unexpected catastrophe. Winter comes every year. People in Gaza understand this failure not as misfortune, but as neglect. People speak of how critical supplies are hindered or postponed, while attempts to reinforce weakened structures are consistently hampered. Grassroots projects have tried to improvise, to distribute plastic sheeting, yet they are still constrained by what is allowed to enter. The failure is political and humanitarian. Solutions exist, but are kept out.

A Preventable Suffering

The aspect that renders this pain especially agonizing is how unnecessary it should be. No individual ought 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 precarious existence is. It strains physiques worn down by anxiety, fatigue, and loss.

The current cold season occurs alongside the Christmas season that, for millions, epitomizes warmth, refuge and care for the neediest. In Palestine, that {symbolism