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The time was around 8:30 PM on a weekday evening when I headed back home in Gaza City. The wind howled, making it impossible to remain any longer, leaving me to walk. In the beginning, it was just a gentle sprinkle, but after about 200 metres the rain suddenly grew heavier. It came as no shock. I stopped near a tent, rubbing my palms together to generate a little heat. A young boy had positioned himself selling baked goods. We shared brief remarks during my pause, though he didn’t seem interested. I saw the cookies were loosely wrapped in plastic, moist from the drizzle, and I questioned if he’d manage to sell them all 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, tents lined both sides of the road. There were no voices from inside them, merely the din of rain pouring down and the moan of the wind. Quickening my pace, trying to dodge the rain, I switched on my mobile phone's torch to light my way. My thoughts kept returning to those taking refuge within: What are they doing now? What thoughts fill their minds? What emotions do they hold? A severe chill gripped the air. I envisioned children huddled under wet blankets, parents adjusting repeatedly to keep them warm.

When I opened the door to my apartment, the cold metal served as a quiet but powerful reminder of the hardships endured across Gaza in these severe cold season. I entered my apartment and couldn't shake the guilt of enjoying a dry home when a multitude remained unprotected to the storm.

The Night Intensifies

During the darkest hours, the storm grew stronger. Outside, tarps on shattered windows billowed and tore, while metal sheets ripped free and crashed to the ground. Cutting through the chaos came the piercing, fearful cries of children, piercing the darkness. I felt completely helpless.

During recent days, the rain has been incessant. Cold, heavy, and driven by strong winds, it has soaked tents, inundated temporary settlements and turned bare earth into mud. In other places, this might be called “bad weather”. In Gaza, it is lived with exposure and abandonment.

Al-Arba’iniya

Locals call this time of year as al-Arba’iniya; the fourty most severe days of winter, beginning in late December and persisting to the end of January. It is the true beginning of winter, the moment when the season shows its true power. Normally, it is faced with preparation and shelter. Currently, Gaza has neither. The frost seeps through homes, streets are vacant and people just persevere.

But the threat posed by the cold is now very real. In the early hours of Sunday before Christmas, civil defense teams recovered the bodies of two children after the roof of a bombarded structure collapsed in northern Gaza, saving five more people, including a child and two women. Two people have not been found. Such collapses are not caused by ongoing hostilities, but the consequence of homes compromised after months of bombardment and succumbing to winter rain. Not long ago, an eight-month-old baby girl in Khan Younis succumbed to exposure to the cold.

Fragile Shelters

Observing the camp nearest my home, I saw the consequences up close. Flimsy tarpaulins buckled beneath the weight of water, mattresses floated and clothes were perpetually moist, never fully drying. Each step reminded me how precarious these dwellings are and how close the rain and cold came to taking life and health for countless individuals living in tents and cramped refuges.

A great number of these residents have already been uprooted, many on multiple occasions. Homes are lost. Neighbourhoods leveled. Winter has come to Gaza, but defense against it has not. It has come devoid of safe refuge, with no power, lacking heat.

Students in the Storm

Being an educator in Gaza, this weather is a heavy burden. My students are not figures in a report; they are faces I recognize; smart, persistent, but profoundly exhausted. Most participate in digital sessions from tents; others from packed rooms where solitude is unattainable and connectivity unreliable. A significant number of pupils have already lost family members. Most have seen their houses destroyed. Yet they continue their education. Their fortitude is remarkable, but it must not be demanded in this way.

In Gaza, what would usually be routine academic practices—projects, due dates—become questions of conscience, dictated every moment by uncertainty about students’ well-being, comfort and proximity to protection.

During nights like these, I cannot help but wonder about them. Are they dry? Do they feel any warmth? Could the storm have shredded through their shelter while they were trying to sleep? For those residing in apartments, or the shells that are left, there is a lack of heat. With electricity scarce and fuel in short supply, warmth comes mainly from bundling up and using whatever blankets are left. Even so, cold nights are unbearable. How then those living in tents?

Aid and Abandonment

Figures show that well over a million people in Gaza reside in temporary housing. Humanitarian assistance, including thermal blankets, have been insufficient. During the recent storm, relief groups reported providing plastic sheets, tents and mattresses to thousands of families. For those affected, however, this assistance was widely experienced as uneven and inadequate, limited to band-aid measures that did little against ongoing suffering to cold, wind and rain. Tents collapse. Respiratory illnesses, hypothermia, and infections associated with damp conditions are rising.

This goes beyond an unexpected catastrophe. Winter is an annual event. People in Gaza view this crisis not as fate, but as abandonment. People speak of how essential materials are restricted or delayed, while attempts to fix broken houses are repeatedly obstructed. Community efforts have tried to improvise, to hand out tarps, yet they are still constrained by restrictions on imports. The failure is political and humanitarian. Solutions exist, but are withheld.

A Preventable Suffering

What makes this suffering especially heartbreaking is how unnecessary it should be. No individual ought to study, raise children, or battle sickness 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 lays bare just how vulnerable survival is. It tests bodies worn down by pressure, weariness, and sorrow.

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