🔗 Share this article

The clock read around 8:30 PM on a weekday evening when I returned home in Gaza City. A strong wind was blowing, and I couldn’t stay out any longer, so I had to walk. At first, it was merely a soft rain, but after about 200 metres the rain became a downpour. That wasn’t surprising. I paused beside a tent, clapping my hands to draw some warmth. A young boy was sitting outside selling sweet treats. We exchanged a few words during my pause, though he didn’t seem interested. I noticed the cookies were loosely wrapped in plastic, dampened from the drizzle, and I questioned if he’d manage to sell them all before the night ended. A deep chill permeated the air.

A Walk Through a City 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 rain pouring down and the roar of the wind. Quickening my pace, attempting to avoid the rain, I turned on my mobile phone's torch to illuminate the path. My thoughts kept returning to those huddled within: How are they passing the time now? What are they thinking? What emotions do they hold? A severe chill gripped the air. I imagined children nestled under damp covers, parents shifting constantly to keep them warm.

As I unlocked the door to my apartment, the freezing handle served as a understated yet stark reminder of the hardships endured across Gaza in these brutal winter climate. I stepped inside my apartment and felt consumed by the guilt of enjoying a dry home when a multitude remained unprotected to the storm.

The Midnight Hour Worsens

As midnight passed, the storm grew stronger. Outside, plastic sheeting on shattered windows billowed and tore, while tin roofing tore loose and crashed to the ground. Above it all came the desperate, terrified shouts of children, piercing the darkness. I felt utterly powerless.

During recent days, the rain has been relentless. Chilly, dense, and propelled by strong winds, it has drenched shelters, inundated temporary settlements and turned bare earth into mud. In other places, this might be called “bad weather”. In Gaza, it is experienced amidst exposure and abandonment.

Al-Arba’iniya

Locals call 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. Ordinarily, it is endured with preparation and shelter. Now, Gaza has neither. The frost seeps through homes, streets are vacant and people just persevere.

But the peril of the season is no longer abstract. On the Sunday morning before Christmas, recovery efforts retrieved the remains of two children after the roof of a war-damaged building collapsed in northern Gaza, saving five more people, including a child and two women. Two people have not been found. These incidents are not the result of fresh strikes, but the result of homes damaged from months of bombardment and succumbing to winter rain. Earlier this month, an eight-month-old baby girl in Khan Younis died of exposure to the cold.

Fragile Shelters

Observing 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, incapable of drying. Each step reminded me 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 cramped refuges.

The majority of these individuals have already been displaced, many several times over. Homes are gone. Neighbourhoods leveled. Winter has come to Gaza, but shelter from its fury has not. It has come without proper shelter, with no power, without heating.

A Teacher's Anguish

In my role as a professor in Gaza, this weather is a heavy burden. My students are not mere statistics; they are young people I speak to; smart, persistent, but profoundly exhausted. Most join virtual lessons from tents; others from cramped quarters where solitude is unattainable and connectivity unreliable. A significant number of pupils have already suffered personal loss. Most have lost their homes. Yet they continue their education. Their fortitude is remarkable, but it ought not be necessary in this way.

In Gaza, what would normally count as routine academic practices—projects, due dates—become ethical dilemmas, dictated every moment by anxiety over students’ well-being, comfort and proximity to protection.

During nights like these, I find myself thinking about them. Are they dry? Is there heat? Did the wind tear through their shelter while they were trying to sleep? For those remaining in apartments, or the shells that are left, there is a lack of heat. With electricity mostly absent and fuel scarce, warmth comes mainly from bundling up and using whatever blankets are left. Even so, cold nights are intolerable. What about those living in tents?

The Humanitarian Shortfall

Reports indicate that well over a million people in Gaza exist in makeshift accommodations. Relief items, including thermal blankets, have been far from enough. During the recent storm, relief groups reported delivering plastic sheets, tents and mattresses to numerous households. On the ground, however, this assistance was widely experienced as uneven and inadequate, limited to temporary solutions that offered scant protection against ongoing suffering to cold, wind and rain. Tents collapse. Sicknesses, hypothermia, and infections associated with damp conditions are rising.

This cannot be described as an unexpected catastrophe. Winter comes every year. 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 consistently hampered. Local initiatives have tried to find solutions, to hand out tarps, yet they remain limited by what is allowed to enter. The culpability lies in political and humanitarian. Solutions exist, but are prevented from arriving.

A Symbolic Season

The factor that intensifies this hardship especially heartbreaking is how unnecessary it should be. No individual ought to study, raise children, or battle sickness standing surrounded by cold water inside a tent. It is wrong for a pupil to worry about the rain ruining their last notebook. Rain reveals just how fragile life has become. It strains physiques worn down by stress, exhaustion, and grief.

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