🔗 Share this article

The time was approximately 8:30 PM on a weekday evening when I returned home in Gaza City. The wind howled, and I couldn’t stay out any longer, leaving me to walk. In the beginning, it was only a light drizzle, but after about 200 metres the rain suddenly grew heavier. This was expected. I stopped near a tent, rubbing my palms together to fight off the chill. A young boy sat nearby selling homemade cookies. We spoke briefly as I waited, although he appeared disengaged. I observed the cookies were poorly packaged in plastic, moist from the drizzle, and I pondered if he’d have enough to sell before the night ended. The cold seeped into everything.

A Walk Through a Place of Tents

As I walked along al-Wehda Street in Gaza City, canvas structures flanked both sides of the road. There were no voices from inside them, just the noise of torrential rain and the whistle of the wind. As I hurried on, attempting to avoid the rain, I activated my mobile phone's torch to light my way. My mind continually drifted to those sheltering inside: What occupies them now? What is their state of mind? What are they experiencing? A severe chill gripped the air. I envisioned children curled under wet blankets, parents adjusting repeatedly to keep them warm.

Upon opening the door to my apartment, the freezing handle served as a quiet but powerful reminder of the struggles borne across Gaza in these severe cold season. I entered my apartment and was overwhelmed by the guilt of enjoying a dry home when a multitude remained unprotected to the storm.

The Darkness Escalates

In the middle of the night, the storm reached its peak. Outside, tarps on broken panes billowed and tore, while corrugated metal tore loose and slammed down. Overriding the noise came the piercing, fearful cries of children, shattering the darkness. I felt utterly powerless.

Over the past two weeks, the rain has been incessant. Chilly, dense, and propelled by strong winds, it has soaked tents, flooded makeshift camps and turned open ground into mud. Elsewhere, this might be called “poor conditions”. In Gaza, it is lived with exposure and abandonment.

Al-Arba’iniya

Residents refer to this time of year as al-Arba’iniya; the most bitter forty 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 shows its true power. Normally, it is endured with preparation and shelter. Currently, Gaza has none of these. The cold bites through homes, streets are deserted and people merely survive.

But the threat posed by the cold is now very real. Early on the Sunday 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 caused by ongoing hostilities, but the outcome of homes damaged from months of bombardment and finally undone by winter rain. Not long ago, an infant in Khan Younis passed away from exposure to the cold.

Precarious Existence

Walking past the camp nearest my home, I observed the results up close. Flimsy tarpaulins sagged under the weight of water, mattresses were adrift and clothes were perpetually moist, always damp. Each step highlighted how vulnerable these tents are and how close the rain and cold came to taking life and health for a vast population living in tents and overcrowded shelters.

A great number of these residents have already been displaced, many repeatedly. Homes are destroyed. Neighbourhoods flattened. Winter has arrived in Gaza, but shelter from its fury has not. It has come lacking adequate housing, with no power, devoid of warmth.

Students in the Storm

In my role as a professor in Gaza, this weather causes deep concern. My students are not figures in a report; they are individuals I know; smart, persistent, but profoundly exhausted. Most attend online classes from tents; others from packed rooms where solitude is unattainable and connectivity intermittent. Countless learners have already experienced bereavement. Most have lost their homes. Yet they still try to study. Their resilience is extraordinary, but it ought not be necessary in this way.

In Gaza, what would normally count as routine academic practices—projects, due dates—turn into questions of conscience, dictated every moment by anxiety over students’ security, heat and access to shelter.

During nights like these, I find myself thinking about them. Are they dry? Is there heat? Did the wind tear through their shelter during the night? For those still living in apartments, or damaged structures, there is a lack of heat. With electricity largely unavailable and fuel rare, warmth comes mainly from bundling up and using the few bedding items available. Nonetheless, cold nights are excruciating. What about those living in tents?

Political Failure

Figures show that over a million people in Gaza reside in temporary housing. Aid supplies, including weatherproof shelters, have been far from enough. During the recent storm, humanitarian partners reported distributing tarpaulins, tents and bedding to thousands of families. On the ground, however, this assistance was frequently felt to be inconsistent and lacking, limited to temporary solutions that offered scant protection against ongoing suffering to cold, wind and rain. Shelters fail. Chest infections, hypothermia, and infections linked to damp conditions are rising.

This is not an unexpected catastrophe. Winter arrives cyclically. People in Gaza view this crisis not as fate, but as abandonment. People speak of how necessary items are restricted or delayed, while attempts to reinforce weakened structures are frequently blocked. Grassroots projects have tried to make do, to hand out tarps, yet they remain limited by bureaucratic barriers. The root cause is political and humanitarian. Remedies are known, 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 fight illness standing surrounded by cold water inside a tent. No student should fear the rain damaging their precious phone. Rain lays bare just how precarious existence is. It strains physiques worn down by anxiety, fatigue, and loss.

This winter coincides with the Christmas season that, for millions, symbolises warmth, refuge and care for the neediest. In Palestine, that {symbolism