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The clock read around 8:30 PM on a weekday evening when I returned home in Gaza City. Gusts of wind blew, and I couldn’t stay out any longer, so walking was my only option. In the beginning, it was only a light drizzle, but a short distance later the rain became a downpour. It came as no shock. I stopped near a tent, clapping my hands to fight off the chill. A young boy had positioned himself selling baked goods. We exchanged a few words as I waited, but his attention was elsewhere. I observed the cookies were loosely wrapped in plastic, already soggy from the drizzle, and I questioned if he’d find buyers before the night ended. The cold seeped into everything.

A Walk Through a City of Tents

As I walked along al-Wehda Street in Gaza City, tents lined both sides of the road. An eerie silence replaced voices from inside them, merely the din of falling water and the moan of the wind. Quickening my pace, trying to dodge the rain, I switched on my mobile phone's torch to illuminate the path. I couldn't stop thinking to those taking refuge within: How are they passing the time now? What is their state of mind? How do they feel? It was bitterly cold. I pictured children nestled under damp covers, parents adjusting repeatedly to keep them warm.

When I opened the door to my apartment, the freezing handle served as a quiet but powerful reminder of the suffering faced across Gaza in these brutal winter climate. I walked into my apartment and felt consumed by the guilt of possessing shelter when countless others faced exposure to the storm.

The Night Intensifies

As midnight passed, the storm reached its peak. Outside, plastic sheeting on shattered windows billowed and tore, while corrugated metal ripped free and crashed to the ground. Overriding the noise came the desperate, terrified shouts of children, cutting through the darkness. I felt completely helpless.

Over the past two weeks, the rain has been relentless. Cold, heavy, and driven by strong winds, it has flooded makeshift homes, inundated temporary settlements and turned bare earth 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

Palestinians know this time of year as al-Arba’iniya; the fourty most severe days of winter, starting from late December and continuing through the end of January. It is the real onset of winter, the moment when the season reveals its full force. Normally, it is faced with preparation and shelter. This year, Gaza has neither. The frost seeps through homes, streets are deserted and people merely survive.

But the peril of the season is now very real. Early on the Sunday before Christmas, rescue operations found the victims of two children after the roof of a war-damaged building collapsed in northern Gaza, freeing five additional individuals, including a child and two women. Two people are still unaccounted for. These incidents are not new attacks, but the outcome of homes damaged from months of bombardment and ultimately defeated by winter rain. In recent days, a young child in Khan Younis succumbed to exposure to the cold.

A Life in Tents

Walking past the camp nearest my home, I saw the consequences up close. Inadequate coverings buckled beneath the weight of water, mattresses were adrift and clothes remained wet, never fully drying. Each step reinforced how precarious these dwellings are and how close the rain and cold came to claiming life and health for a vast population living in tents and packed sanctuaries.

A great number of these residents have already been displaced, many repeatedly. Homes are lost. Neighbourhoods flattened. Winter has come to Gaza, but defense against it has not. It has come devoid of safe refuge, in darkness, devoid of warmth.

The Weight on Education

In my role as a professor in Gaza, this weather is a heavy burden. My students are not mere statistics; they are faces I recognize; intelligent, determined, but deeply weary. Most participate in digital sessions from tents; others from overcrowded shelters where privacy is impossible and connectivity unreliable. Countless learners have already experienced bereavement. Most have seen their houses destroyed. Yet they persist in learning. Their perseverance is astounding, but it should not be required in this way.

In Gaza, what would usually be routine academic practices—projects, due dates—transform into moral negotiations, influenced daily by uncertainty about students’ safety, warmth and access to shelter.

During nights like these, I cannot help but wonder about them. Are they dry? Are they warm? Did the wind tear through their shelter during the night? For those residing in apartments, or damaged structures, there is an absence of warmth. With electricity mostly absent and fuel scarce, warmth comes mainly from bundling up and using any remaining covers. Nonetheless, cold nights are unbearable. How then those living in tents?

The Humanitarian Shortfall

Agencies state that well over a million people in Gaza reside in temporary housing. Relief items, including weatherproof shelters, have been far from enough. Amid the last tempest, humanitarian partners reported providing tarpaulins, tents and bedding to numerous households. For those affected, however, this assistance was widely experienced as inconsistent and lacking, limited to short-term fixes that were largely ineffective against extended hardship to cold, wind and rain. Tents collapse. Chest infections, hypothermia, and infections linked to damp conditions are on the upswing.

This is not an surprise calamity. Winter comes every year. People in Gaza view this crisis not as misfortune, but as neglect. People speak of how critical supplies are blocked or slowed, while attempts to fix broken houses are consistently hampered. Community efforts have tried to make do, to hand out tarps, yet they remain limited by what is allowed to enter. The culpability lies in political and humanitarian. Remedies are known, but are prevented from arriving.

A Preventable Suffering

The aspect that renders this pain especially painful is how preventable it is. It is unconscionable to study, raise children, or combat disease standing ankle-deep in cold water inside a tent. No student should fear the rain damaging their precious phone. Rain lays bare just how fragile life has become. It challenges health worn down by anxiety, fatigue, and loss.

This winter occurs alongside the Christmas season that, for millions, represents warmth, refuge and care for the disadvantaged. In Palestine, that {symbolism