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The clock read about 8:30 PM on a weekday evening when I headed back home in Gaza City. Gusts of wind blew, and I couldn’t stay out any longer, leaving me to walk. Initially, it was merely a soft rain, but following a brief walk the rain suddenly grew heavier. It came as no shock. I paused beside a tent, clapping my hands to fight off the chill. A young boy was sitting outside selling baked goods. We exchanged a few words as I waited, but his attention was elsewhere. I noticed the cookies were loosely wrapped in plastic, already soggy from the drizzle, and I questioned if he’d manage to sell them all before the night ended. The cold seeped into everything.

A Walk Through a Landscape of Tents

As I walked along al-Wehda Street in Gaza City, canvas structures flanked both sides of the road. An eerie silence replaced voices from inside them, just the noise of rain pouring down and the whistle of the wind. As I hurried on, trying to dodge the rain, I switched on my mobile phone's torch to illuminate the path. My thoughts kept returning to those huddled within: What occupies them now? What are they thinking? What are they experiencing? It was bitterly cold. I envisioned children nestled under soaked bedding, parents moving restlessly to keep them warm.

When I opened the door to my apartment, the freezing handle served as a quiet but powerful reminder of the hardships endured across Gaza in these severe cold season. I entered my apartment and couldn't shake the guilt of enjoying a dry home when countless others faced exposure to the storm.

The Night Escalates

In the middle of the night, the storm intensified. Outside, plastic sheeting on damaged glass billowed and tore, while metal sheets ripped free and slammed down. Above it all came the desperate, terrified shouts of children, shattering the darkness. I felt completely helpless.

Over the past two weeks, the rain has been unending. Cold, heavy, and driven by strong winds, it has soaked tents, flooded makeshift camps and turned bare earth into mud. In other places, this might be called “poor conditions”. In Gaza, it is experienced amidst exposure and abandonment.

Al-Arba’iniya

Palestinians know this time of year as al-Arba’iniya; the most bitter forty days of winter, commencing in late December and persisting to the end of January. It is the real onset of winter, the moment when the season reveals its full force. Typically, it is endured with preparation and shelter. Now, Gaza has none of these. The chill penetrates through homes, streets are vacant and people merely survive.

But the threat posed by the cold is far from theoretical. In the early hours of Sunday before Christmas, civil defense teams found the victims of two children after the roof of a bombarded structure collapsed in northern Gaza, freeing five additional individuals, including a child and two women. Two people remain missing. These incidents are not caused by ongoing hostilities, but the outcome of homes compromised after months of bombardment and ultimately defeated by winter rain. In recent days, an infant in Khan Younis died of exposure to the cold.

Fragile Shelters

Observing the camp nearest my home, I witnessed the impact up close. Inadequate coverings sagged under the weight of water, mattresses floated and clothes hung damply, always damp. Each step reinforced how precarious these dwellings are 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 several times over. Homes are destroyed. Neighbourhoods leveled. Winter has arrived in Gaza, but protection from it has not. It has come devoid of safe refuge, without electricity, devoid of warmth.

The Weight on Education

Being an educator in Gaza, this weather is a heavy burden. My students are not figures in a report; they are young people I speak to; bright, resilient, but deeply weary. Most join virtual lessons from tents; others from packed rooms where privacy is impossible and connectivity sporadic. A significant number of pupils have already suffered personal loss. Most have lost their homes. Yet they persist in learning. Their perseverance is astounding, but it should not be required in this way.

In Gaza, what would typically constitute routine academic practices—assignments, deadlines—turn into questions of conscience, influenced daily by uncertainty about students’ safety, warmth and ability to find refuge.

On evenings such as this, I am constantly preoccupied about them. Are they dry? Do they feel any warmth? Could the storm have shredded through their shelter during the night? For those remaining in apartments, or the shells that are left, there is no heating. With electricity mostly absent and fuel in short supply, warmth comes mostly via bundling up and using whatever blankets are left. Nonetheless, cold nights are intolerable. What, then those living in tents?

Aid and Abandonment

Figures show that well over a million people in Gaza live in shelters. Humanitarian assistance, including insulated tents, have been insufficient. When the cyclone hit, relief groups reported delivering tarpaulins, tents and bedding to a multitude of people. For those affected, however, this assistance was widely experienced as patchy and insufficient, limited to short-term fixes that did little against prolonged exposure to cold, wind and rain. Structures give way. Sicknesses, hypothermia, and infections linked to damp conditions are rising.

This is not an surprise calamity. Winter is an annual event. People in Gaza view this crisis not as bad luck, 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 provide coverings, yet they are still constrained by restrictions on imports. The failure is political and humanitarian. Solutions exist, but are kept out.

A Preventable Suffering

The aspect that renders this pain especially heartbreaking is how unnecessary it should be. No individual ought to study, raise children, or fight illness standing knee-high in cold water inside a tent. No learner should dread the rain ruining their last notebook. Rain lays bare just how vulnerable survival is. It strains physiques worn down by anxiety, fatigue, and loss.

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