🔗 Share this article

The clock read about 8:30 PM on a weekday evening when I headed back home in Gaza City. A strong wind was blowing, forcing me inside any longer, leaving me to walk. In the beginning, it was only a light drizzle, but a short distance later the rain suddenly grew heavier. This was expected. I paused beside a tent, rubbing my palms together to generate a little heat. A young boy sat nearby selling baked goods. We exchanged a few words as I waited, but his attention was elsewhere. I observed the cookies were hastily covered in plastic, moist from the drizzle, and I questioned if he’d have enough to sell before the night ended. The cold seeped into everything.

A Journey Through a Landscape of Tents

Walking down al-Wehda Street in Gaza City, makeshift shelters crowded both sides of the road. An eerie silence replaced voices from inside them, just the noise of rain pouring down and the moan of the wind. Quickening my pace, attempting to avoid the rain, I switched on my mobile phone's torch to illuminate the path. My thoughts kept returning to those sheltering inside: What occupies them now? What is their state of mind? What emotions do they hold? It was bitterly cold. I imagined children curled under wet blankets, parents moving restlessly to keep them warm.

Upon opening the door to my apartment, the freezing handle served as a quiet but powerful reminder of the hardships endured across Gaza in these harsh winter conditions. I stepped inside my apartment and was overwhelmed by the guilt of possessing shelter when so many were exposed to the storm.

The Night Intensifies

As midnight passed, the storm intensified. Outside, plastic sheeting on broken panes whipped and strained, while corrugated metal tore loose and crashed to the ground. Above it all came the piercing, fearful cries of children, cutting through the darkness. I felt totally incapable.

Over the past two weeks, the rain has been unending. Cold, heavy, and driven by strong winds, it has flooded makeshift homes, swamped refugee areas and turned the soil into mud. In other places, this might be called “inclement weather”. In Gaza, it is lived with exposure and abandonment.

The Cruelest Season

Residents refer to this time of year as al-Arba’iniya; the most bitter forty days of winter, starting from late December and continuing through the end of January. It is the definite start of winter, the moment when the season unleashes its intensity. Ordinarily, it is faced with preparation and shelter. Currently, Gaza has none of these. The frost seeps through homes, streets are deserted and people just persevere.

But the peril of the season is far from theoretical. In the early hours of Sunday before Christmas, rescue operations found the victims of two children after the roof of a shelled home collapsed in northern Gaza, saving five more people, 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 finally undone by winter rain. In recent days, an eight-month-old baby girl in Khan Younis died of exposure to the cold.

Precarious Existence

Walking past the camp nearest my home, I saw the consequences up close. Inadequate coverings sagged under the weight of water, mattresses floated and clothes were perpetually moist, incapable of drying. Each step reminded me how vulnerable these tents are and how close the rain and cold came to claiming life and health for hundreds of thousands 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 descended upon Gaza, but shelter from its fury has not. It has come lacking adequate housing, without electricity, lacking heat.

A Teacher's Anguish

In my role as a professor in Gaza, this weather weighs heavily on me. My students are not figures in a report; they are young people I speak to; bright, resilient, but deeply weary. Most attend online classes from tents; others from overcrowded shelters where personal space doesn't exist and connectivity sporadic. A significant number of pupils have already experienced bereavement. Most have been rendered homeless. Yet they still try to study. Their resilience is extraordinary, but it should not be required in this way.

In Gaza, what would typically constitute routine academic practices—projects, due dates—turn into questions of conscience, influenced daily by anxiety over students’ security, heat and proximity to protection.

On evenings such as this, I am constantly preoccupied about them. Are they dry? Are they warm? Has the gale ripped through their shelter during the night? For those residing in apartments, or what remains of them, there is no heating. With electricity scarce and fuel rare, warmth comes mostly via wearing multiple layers and using any remaining covers. Nonetheless, cold nights are unbearable. What, then those living in tents?

Political Failure

Figures show that well over a million people in Gaza reside in temporary housing. Relief items, including thermal blankets, have been far from enough. When the cyclone hit, aid organizations reported delivering plastic sheets, tents and mattresses to numerous households. In reality, however, this assistance was often perceived as patchy and insufficient, limited to band-aid measures that did little against ongoing suffering to cold, wind and rain. Structures give way. Sicknesses, hypothermia, and infections linked to damp conditions are rising.

This is not an unexpected catastrophe. Winter comes every year. People in Gaza interpret this shortcoming not as fate, but as neglect. People speak of how necessary items are restricted or delayed, while attempts to fix broken houses are repeatedly obstructed. Grassroots projects have tried to make do, to distribute plastic sheeting, yet they are still constrained by what is allowed to enter. The root cause is political and humanitarian. Remedies are known, but are kept out.

An Unnecessary Pain

The aspect that renders this pain especially painful is how unnecessary it should be. It is unconscionable to study, raise children, or battle sickness standing surrounded by cold water inside a tent. It is wrong for a pupil to worry about the rain ruining their last notebook. Rain exposes just how precarious existence is. It tests bodies worn down by stress, exhaustion, and grief.

The current cold season aligns with the Christmas season that, for millions, symbolises warmth, refuge and care for the disadvantaged. In Palestine, that {symbolism