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The time was about 8:30 PM on a weekday evening when I returned home in Gaza City. Gusts of wind blew, forcing me inside any longer, leaving me to walk. In the beginning, it was just a gentle sprinkle, but after about 200 metres the rain became a downpour. This was expected. I paused beside a tent, clapping my hands to draw some warmth. A young boy was sitting outside selling homemade cookies. We spoke briefly during my pause, but his attention was elsewhere. I saw the cookies were hastily covered in plastic, already soggy from the drizzle, and I wondered if he’d have enough to sell before the night ended. The cold seeped into everything.

A Trek Through a Place of Tents

While traversing al-Wehda Street in Gaza City, canvas structures flanked both sides of the road. No sounds of conversation came from inside them, just the noise of falling water and the moan of the wind. Quickening my pace, trying to dodge the rain, I activated my mobile phone's torch to see the road ahead. My mind continually drifted to those sheltering inside: What are they doing now? What thoughts fill their minds? What are they experiencing? It was bitterly cold. I imagined children nestled under wet blankets, parents shifting constantly to keep them warm.

When I opened the door to my apartment, the freezing handle served as a quiet but powerful reminder of the suffering faced across Gaza in these brutal winter climate. I stepped inside my apartment and felt consumed by the guilt of possessing shelter when countless others faced exposure to the storm.

The Darkness Intensifies

As midnight passed, the storm grew stronger. Outside, plastic sheeting on shattered windows billowed and tore, while metal sheets broke away and crashed to the ground. Overriding the noise came the piercing, fearful cries of children, cutting through the darkness. I felt totally incapable.

During recent days, the rain has been unending. Chilly, dense, and propelled by strong winds, it has drenched shelters, swamped refugee areas and turned open ground into mud. In other places, this might be called “bad weather”. In Gaza, it is lived with exposure and abandonment.

The Cruelest Season

Locals call this time of year as al-Arba’iniya; the 40 coldest and harshest days of winter, beginning in late December and lasting until the end of January. It is the definite start of winter, the moment when the season reveals its full force. Normally, it is endured with preparation and shelter. This year, Gaza has neither. The frost seeps through homes, streets are empty and people just persevere.

But the danger of winter is now very real. On the Sunday morning before Christmas, rescue operations recovered the bodies 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. These structural failures are not caused by ongoing hostilities, but the outcome of homes weakened by months of bombardment and succumbing to winter rain. Not long ago, a young child in Khan Younis died of exposure to the cold.

Fragile Shelters

Walking past the camp nearest my home, I witnessed the impact up close. Flimsy tarpaulins strained under the weight of water, mattresses bobbed in water and clothes were perpetually moist, incapable of drying. Each step reminded me 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.

The majority of these individuals have already been displaced, many on multiple occasions. Homes are gone. Neighbourhoods leveled. Winter has arrived in Gaza, but protection from it has not. It has come lacking adequate housing, in darkness, without heating.

Students in the Storm

In my role as a professor in Gaza, this weather is a heavy burden. My students are not mere statistics; they are individuals I know; intelligent, determined, but profoundly exhausted. Most attend online classes from tents; others from cramped quarters where personal space doesn't exist and connectivity sporadic. Countless learners have already lost family members. Most have seen their houses destroyed. Yet they still try to study. Their fortitude is remarkable, but it ought not be necessary in this way.

In Gaza, what would usually be routine academic practices—tasks, schedules—turn into questions of conscience, dictated every moment by concern for students’ safety, warmth and proximity to protection.

On evenings such as this, I cannot help but wonder about them. Do they have dryness? Are they warm? 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 an absence of warmth. With electricity mostly absent and fuel scarce, warmth comes mostly via donning extra clothing and using whatever blankets are left. Even so, cold nights are intolerable. What, then those living in tents?

Aid and Abandonment

Reports indicate that more than a million people in Gaza live in shelters. Relief items, including weatherproof shelters, have been inadequate. When the cyclone hit, humanitarian partners reported providing plastic sheets, tents and mattresses to thousands of families. For those affected, however, this assistance was widely experienced as patchy and insufficient, limited to band-aid measures that were largely ineffective against extended hardship to cold, wind and rain. Tents collapse. Chest infections, hypothermia, and infections caused by damp conditions are increasing.

This cannot be described as an surprise calamity. Winter is an annual event. People in Gaza view this crisis not as fate, but as abandonment. People speak of how necessary items are hindered or postponed, while attempts to repair damaged homes are consistently hampered. Community efforts have tried to improvise, to distribute plastic sheeting, yet they remain limited by what is allowed to enter. The root cause is political and humanitarian. Remedies are known, but are prevented from arriving.

An Unnecessary Pain

The factor that intensifies this hardship especially painful is how avoidable it could have been. It is unconscionable to study, raise children, or fight illness standing ankle-deep in cold water inside a tent. No learner should dread the rain destroying their final textbook. Rain exposes just how precarious existence is. It challenges health worn down by pressure, weariness, and sorrow.

This year's chill occurs alongside the Christmas season that, for millions, represents warmth, refuge and care for the disadvantaged. In Palestine, that {symbolism