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It was about 8:30 PM on a Thursday when I headed back home in Gaza City. A strong wind was blowing, and I couldn’t stay out any longer, so I had to walk. In the beginning, it was merely a soft rain, but following a brief walk the rain intensified abruptly. That wasn’t surprising. I took shelter by a tent, clapping my hands to fight off the chill. A young boy had positioned himself selling sweet treats. We exchanged a few words during my pause, but his attention was elsewhere. I saw the cookies were loosely wrapped in plastic, dampened from the drizzle, and I pondered if he’d manage to sell them all before the night ended. The cold seeped into everything.

A Journey Through a Landscape of Tents

As I walked along al-Wehda Street in Gaza City, makeshift shelters crowded both sides of the road. There were no voices from inside them, merely the din of rain pouring down and the roar of the wind. As I hurried on, seeking escape from the rain, I activated my mobile phone's torch to see the road ahead. I couldn't stop thinking to those sheltering inside: What occupies them now? What thoughts fill their minds? How do they feel? The cold was piercing. I pictured children huddled under soaked bedding, parents moving restlessly to keep them warm.

As I unlocked the door to my apartment, the cold metal served as a subtle yet haunting reminder of the struggles borne across Gaza in these severe cold season. I walked into my apartment and couldn't shake the guilt of possessing shelter when so many were exposed to the storm.

The Darkness Escalates

During the darkest hours, the storm intensified. Outside, tarps on shattered windows sagged and flapped violently, while metal sheets tore loose and slammed down. Above it all came the desperate, terrified shouts of children, piercing the darkness. I felt utterly powerless.

For the last fortnight, the rain has been unending. Freezing, pouring, and carried by strong winds, it has drenched shelters, flooded makeshift camps and turned open ground into mud. Elsewhere, this might be called “inclement weather”. In Gaza, it is experienced amidst exposure and abandonment.

Al-Arba’iniya

Palestinians know this time of year as al-Arba’iniya; the fourty most severe days of winter, beginning in late December and lasting until the end of January. It is the real onset of winter, the moment when the season shows its true power. Typically, it is faced with preparation and shelter. This year, Gaza has no such defenses. The frost seeps through homes, streets are deserted and people simply endure.

But the danger of winter is no longer abstract. In the early hours of Sunday before Christmas, recovery efforts 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 are still unaccounted for. Such collapses are not new attacks, but the result of homes weakened by months of bombardment and succumbing to winter rain. In recent days, an eight-month-old baby girl in Khan Younis died of exposure to the cold.

A Life in Tents

Walking past the camp nearest my home, I saw the consequences up close. Flimsy tarpaulins strained under the weight of water, mattresses bobbed in water and clothes remained wet, incapable of drying. Each step reinforced how fragile these shelters were and how close the rain and cold came to claiming life and health for hundreds of thousands living in tents and overcrowded shelters.

The majority of these individuals have already been forced from their homes, many several times over. Homes are lost. Neighbourhoods leveled. Winter has come to Gaza, but protection from it has not. It has come lacking adequate housing, with no power, devoid of warmth.

A Teacher's Anguish

Being an educator in Gaza, this weather is a heavy burden. My students are not figures in a report; they are individuals I know; smart, persistent, but profoundly exhausted. Most participate in digital sessions from tents; others from packed rooms where solitude is unattainable and connectivity intermittent. A significant number of pupils have already experienced bereavement. Most have lost their homes. Yet they continue their education. Their perseverance is astounding, but it ought not be necessary in this way.

In Gaza, what would usually be routine academic practices—assignments, deadlines—become moral negotiations, dictated every moment by uncertainty about students’ safety, warmth and proximity to protection.

When the storm rages, I am constantly preoccupied about them. Do they have dryness? Do they feel any warmth? Did the wind tear through their shelter as they attempted to rest? For those residing in apartments, or the shells that are left, there is an absence of warmth. With electricity mostly absent and fuel rare, warmth comes primarily through donning extra clothing and using any remaining covers. Nonetheless, cold nights are excruciating. How then those living in tents?

Aid and Abandonment

Figures show that well over a million people in Gaza live in shelters. Relief items, including insulated tents, have been inadequate. Amid the last tempest, relief groups reported providing tarpaulins, tents and bedding to thousands of families. In reality, however, this assistance was widely experienced as inconsistent and lacking, limited to band-aid measures that did little against extended hardship to cold, wind and rain. Shelters fail. Chest infections, hypothermia, and infections associated with damp conditions are on the upswing.

This is not an unexpected catastrophe. Winter is an annual event. People in Gaza understand this failure not as bad luck, but as being forsaken. People speak of how essential materials are blocked or slowed, while attempts to fix broken houses are consistently hampered. Community efforts have tried to improvise, to distribute plastic sheeting, yet they remain limited by restrictions on imports. The root cause is political and humanitarian. Answers are available, but are kept out.

A Preventable Suffering

The factor that intensifies this hardship especially agonizing is how avoidable it could have been. It is unconscionable to study, raise children, or combat disease standing knee-high in cold water inside a tent. No learner should dread the rain ruining their last notebook. Rain lays bare just how precarious existence is. It challenges health worn down by anxiety, fatigue, and loss.

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