🔗 Share this article

The clock read around 8:30 PM on a Thursday when I made my way home in Gaza City. A strong wind was blowing, making it impossible to remain any longer, so walking was my only option. Initially, it was only a light drizzle, but following a brief walk the rain became a downpour. This was expected. I took shelter by a tent, trying to warm my hands to generate a little heat. A young boy sat nearby selling homemade cookies. We shared brief remarks during my pause, although he appeared disengaged. I observed the cookies were loosely wrapped in plastic, dampened from the drizzle, and I wondered if he’d find buyers before the night ended. The cold seeped into everything.

A Walk Through a Landscape of Tents

While traversing al-Wehda Street in Gaza City, tents lined both sides of the road. No sounds of conversation came 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 turned on my mobile phone's torch to illuminate the path. My thoughts kept returning to those sheltering inside: How are they passing the time now? What is their state of mind? How do they feel? It was bitterly cold. I imagined children nestled under damp covers, parents shifting constantly to keep them warm.

Upon opening the door to my apartment, the cold metal served as a subtle yet haunting reminder of the hardships endured across Gaza in these brutal winter climate. I walked into my apartment and couldn't shake the guilt of enjoying a dry home when so many were exposed to the storm.

The Midnight Hour Worsens

During the darkest hours, the storm intensified. Outside, makeshift covers on shattered windows sagged and flapped violently, while metal sheets ripped free and slammed down. Above it all came the desperate, terrified shouts of children, cutting through the darkness. I felt totally incapable.

For the last fortnight, the rain has been unending. Freezing, pouring, and carried by strong winds, it has flooded makeshift homes, swamped refugee areas and turned bare earth into mud. In other places, this might be called “inclement weather”. In Gaza, it is endured in a state of exposure and abandonment.

Al-Arba’iniya

Locals call this time of year as al-Arba’iniya; the most bitter forty days of winter, beginning in 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. Ordinarily, it is weathered through preparation and shelter. Currently, Gaza has no such defenses. The frost seeps through homes, streets are empty and people merely survive.

But the threat posed by the cold is far from theoretical. Early on the Sunday before Christmas, recovery efforts recovered the bodies 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 caused by ongoing hostilities, but the result of homes compromised after months of bombardment and ultimately defeated by winter rain. In recent days, an eight-month-old baby girl in Khan Younis succumbed to exposure to the cold.

Precarious Existence

Walking past the camp nearest my home, I witnessed the impact up close. Flimsy tarpaulins buckled beneath the weight of water, mattresses were adrift and clothes were perpetually moist, always damp. Each step reminded me how fragile these shelters were and how close the rain and cold came to taking life and health for a vast population living in tents and cramped refuges.

Most of these people have already been forced from their homes, many repeatedly. Homes are gone. Neighbourhoods razed. Winter has arrived in Gaza, but shelter from its fury has not. It has come devoid of safe refuge, in darkness, without heating.

The Weight on Education

As a university lecturer in Gaza, this weather weighs heavily on me. 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 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 typically constitute routine academic practices—tasks, schedules—transform into ethical dilemmas, dictated every moment by anxiety over students’ well-being, comfort and proximity to protection.

During nights like these, I am constantly preoccupied about them. Is their shelter holding? Are they warm? Did the wind tear through their shelter while they were trying to sleep? For those residing in apartments, or damaged structures, 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 excruciating. How then those living in tents?

Aid and Abandonment

Reports indicate that well over a million people in Gaza exist in makeshift accommodations. Humanitarian assistance, including weatherproof shelters, have been far from enough. Amid the last tempest, aid organizations reported delivering tarpaulins, tents and bedding to numerous households. On the ground, however, this assistance was widely experienced as patchy and insufficient, limited to temporary solutions that offered scant protection against prolonged exposure to cold, wind and rain. Shelters fail. Respiratory illnesses, hypothermia, and infections linked to damp conditions are on the upswing.

This cannot be described as an unforeseen disaster. Winter arrives cyclically. People in Gaza view this crisis not as misfortune, but as abandonment. People speak of how critical supplies are hindered or postponed, while attempts to fix broken houses are frequently blocked. Community efforts have tried to improvise, to hand out tarps, yet they continue to be hampered by bureaucratic barriers. The root cause is political and humanitarian. Answers are available, but are prevented from arriving.

A Symbolic Season

The factor that intensifies this hardship especially painful is how avoidable it could have been. It is unconscionable to study, raise children, or battle sickness standing ankle-deep 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 vulnerable survival is. It challenges health worn down by anxiety, fatigue, and loss.

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