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The clock read around 8:30 PM on a Thursday when I made my way home in Gaza City. A strong wind was blowing, 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 intensified abruptly. This was expected. I stopped near a tent, clapping my hands to fight off the chill. A young boy had positioned himself selling homemade cookies. We exchanged a few words during my pause, but his attention was elsewhere. I observed the cookies were poorly packaged in plastic, moist from the drizzle, and I questioned if he’d find buyers before the night ended. A deep chill permeated the air.

A Trek Through a Place of Tents

Walking down al-Wehda Street in Gaza City, makeshift shelters crowded both sides of the road. There were no voices from inside them, just the noise of torrential rain and the roar of the wind. Rushing forward, trying to dodge the rain, I activated my mobile phone's torch to see the road ahead. I couldn't stop thinking to those taking refuge within: What occupies them now? What thoughts fill their minds? What emotions do they hold? A severe chill gripped the air. I envisioned children curled under wet blankets, parents moving restlessly to keep them warm.

As I unlocked the door to my apartment, the cold metal served as a understated yet stark reminder of the struggles borne across Gaza in these harsh winter conditions. I entered my apartment and couldn't shake the guilt of enjoying a dry home 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 damaged glass whipped and strained, while metal sheets ripped free and slammed down. Overriding the noise came the sharp, panicked screams of children, piercing the darkness. I felt totally incapable.

During recent days, the rain has been relentless. Cold, heavy, and driven by strong winds, it has drenched shelters, inundated temporary settlements and turned bare earth into mud. In other places, this might be called “poor conditions”. In Gaza, it is endured in a state of exposure and abandonment.

The Cruelest Season

Residents refer to this time of year as al-Arba’iniya; the 40 coldest and harshest days of winter, commencing in late December and continuing through the end of January. It is the real onset of winter, the moment when the season reveals its full force. Typically, it is faced with preparation and shelter. Currently, Gaza has neither. The frost seeps through homes, streets are empty and people just persevere.

But the peril of the season is no longer abstract. On the Sunday morning before Christmas, rescue operations recovered the bodies of two children after the roof of a war-damaged building collapsed in northern Gaza, freeing five additional individuals, including a child and two women. Two people remain missing. These incidents are not new attacks, but the consequence of homes compromised after months of bombardment and ultimately defeated by winter rain. Earlier this month, an infant in Khan Younis succumbed to exposure to the cold.

A Life in Tents

Observing the camp nearest my home, I observed the results up close. Thin plastic sheets sagged under the weight of water, mattresses bobbed in water and clothes hung damply, never fully drying. Each step reinforced how vulnerable these tents are and how close the rain and cold came to claiming life and health for countless individuals living in tents and cramped refuges.

Most of these people have already been uprooted, many several times over. Homes are gone. Neighbourhoods razed. Winter has arrived in Gaza, but shelter from its fury has not. It has come lacking adequate housing, in darkness, without heating.

The Weight on Education

Being an educator in Gaza, this weather is a heavy burden. My students are not distant names; they are faces I recognize; bright, resilient, but profoundly exhausted. 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 lost family members. Most have seen their houses destroyed. Yet they persist in learning. Their perseverance is astounding, but it should not be required in this way.

In Gaza, what would usually be routine academic practices—assignments, deadlines—become questions of conscience, dictated every moment by anxiety over students’ safety, warmth and proximity to protection.

When the storm rages, I find myself thinking about them. Are they dry? Do they feel any warmth? Did the wind tear through their shelter during the night? For those residing in apartments, or the shells that are left, there is an absence of warmth. With electricity mostly absent and fuel scarce, warmth comes mostly via bundling up and using any remaining covers. Despite this, cold nights are excruciating. What, then those living in tents?

Aid and Abandonment

Agencies state that well over a million people in Gaza reside in temporary housing. Aid supplies, including weatherproof shelters, have been insufficient. Amid the last tempest, humanitarian partners reported distributing plastic sheets, tents and mattresses to a multitude of people. In reality, however, this assistance was frequently felt to be patchy and insufficient, limited to short-term fixes that did little against ongoing suffering to cold, wind and rain. Tents collapse. Chest infections, hypothermia, and infections associated with damp conditions are increasing.

This cannot be described as an unexpected catastrophe. Winter is an annual event. People in Gaza understand this failure not as misfortune, but as abandonment. People speak of how essential materials are restricted or delayed, while attempts to fix broken houses are frequently blocked. Grassroots projects have tried to find solutions, to hand out tarps, yet they remain limited by restrictions on imports. The root cause is political and humanitarian. Solutions exist, but are kept out.

A Preventable Suffering

The factor that intensifies this hardship especially heartbreaking is how preventable it is. No individual ought to study, raise children, or fight illness standing ankle-deep in cold water inside a tent. It is wrong for a pupil to worry about the rain damaging their precious phone. Rain exposes just how vulnerable survival is. It challenges health 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 disadvantaged. In Palestine, that {symbolism