🔗 Share this article

It was approximately 8:30 PM on a weekday evening when I returned home in Gaza City. Gusts of wind blew, and I couldn’t stay out any longer, leaving me to walk. Initially, it was only a light drizzle, but after about 200 metres the rain became a downpour. It came as no shock. I stopped near a tent, trying to warm my hands to generate a little heat. A young boy had positioned himself selling sweet treats. We spoke briefly as I waited, but his attention was elsewhere. I observed the cookies were poorly packaged in plastic, moist from the drizzle, and I pondered if he’d find buyers before the night ended. The cold seeped into everything.

A Trek Through a City of Tents

While traversing al-Wehda Street in Gaza City, canvas structures flanked 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, attempting to avoid the rain, I activated my mobile phone's torch to light my way. My mind continually drifted to those taking refuge within: What are they doing now? What are they thinking? How do they feel? The cold was piercing. I imagined children curled under wet blankets, parents adjusting repeatedly to keep them warm.

Upon opening the door to my apartment, the cold metal served as a understated yet stark reminder of the suffering faced across Gaza in these brutal winter climate. I stepped inside my apartment and was overwhelmed by the guilt of possessing shelter when a multitude remained unprotected to the storm.

The Darkness Worsens

In the middle of the night, the storm reached its peak. Outside, plastic sheeting on broken panes billowed and tore, while metal sheets broke away and slammed down. Cutting through the chaos came the desperate, terrified shouts of children, cutting through 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, flooded makeshift camps and turned the soil into mud. In different contexts, this might be called “inclement weather”. In Gaza, it is endured in a state of exposure and abandonment.

The Cruelest Season

Locals call this time of year as al-Arba’iniya; the most bitter forty days of winter, starting from late December and persisting to the end of January. It is the true beginning of winter, the moment when the season unleashes its intensity. Normally, it is endured with preparation and shelter. This year, Gaza has none of these. The cold bites through homes, streets are deserted and people simply endure.

But the peril of the season is now very real. On the Sunday morning before Christmas, recovery efforts 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 are still unaccounted for. Such collapses are not new attacks, but the consequence of homes compromised after months of bombardment and succumbing to winter rain. In recent days, an eight-month-old baby girl in Khan Younis succumbed to exposure to the cold.

A Life in Tents

Passing by the camp nearest my home, I witnessed the impact up close. Thin plastic sheets buckled beneath the weight of water, mattresses floated and clothes remained wet, incapable of drying. Each step reinforced how precarious these dwellings are and how close the rain and cold came to taking life and health for hundreds of thousands living in tents and cramped refuges.

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

A Teacher's Anguish

As a university lecturer in Gaza, this weather is a heavy burden. My students are not distant names; they are individuals I know; intelligent, determined, but extremely fatigued. Most attend online classes from tents; others from overcrowded shelters where personal space doesn't exist and connectivity sporadic. Many of my students have already experienced bereavement. Most have seen their houses destroyed. Yet they persist in learning. Their fortitude is remarkable, but it must not be demanded in this way.

In Gaza, what would usually be routine academic practices—projects, due dates—transform into moral negotiations, shaped each day by anxiety over students’ well-being, comfort and proximity to protection.

When the storm rages, I find myself thinking about them. Do they have dryness? Is there heat? Could the storm have shredded through their shelter as they attempted to rest? For those remaining in apartments, or what remains of them, there is a lack of heat. With electricity mostly absent and fuel in short supply, warmth comes primarily through wearing multiple layers and using the few bedding items available. Despite this, cold nights are intolerable. What about those living in tents?

The Humanitarian Shortfall

Figures show that well over a million people in Gaza exist in makeshift accommodations. Aid supplies, including weatherproof shelters, have been far from enough. When the cyclone hit, relief groups reported providing plastic sheets, tents and mattresses to numerous households. In reality, however, this assistance was widely experienced as uneven and inadequate, limited to temporary solutions that offered scant protection against extended hardship to cold, wind and rain. Shelters fail. Respiratory illnesses, hypothermia, and infections caused by damp conditions are on the upswing.

This is not an surprise calamity. Winter comes every year. People in Gaza understand this failure not as misfortune, but as neglect. People speak of how necessary items are hindered or postponed, while attempts to fix broken houses are frequently blocked. Grassroots projects have tried to find solutions, to distribute plastic sheeting, yet they remain limited by bureaucratic barriers. The failure is political and humanitarian. Answers are available, but are kept out.

A Preventable Suffering

The aspect that renders this pain especially painful is how preventable it is. No one should have to study, raise children, or combat disease standing knee-high in cold water inside a tent. It is wrong for a pupil to worry about the rain damaging their precious phone. Rain lays bare just how precarious existence is. It strains physiques worn down by anxiety, fatigue, and loss.

The current cold season occurs alongside the Christmas season that, for millions, symbolises warmth, refuge and care for the most vulnerable. In Palestine, that {symbolism