🔗 Share this article

The time was around 8:30 PM on a weekday evening when I headed back home in Gaza City. The wind howled, forcing me inside any longer, so I had to walk. Initially, it was just a gentle sprinkle, but after about 200 metres the rain suddenly grew heavier. This was expected. I took shelter by a tent, rubbing my palms together to generate a little heat. A young boy was sitting outside selling baked goods. We shared brief remarks during my pause, but his attention was elsewhere. I saw the cookies were hastily covered in plastic, moist from the drizzle, and I questioned if he’d find buyers before the night ended. The cold seeped into everything.

A Trek Through a Landscape 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 torrential rain and the roar of the wind. As I hurried on, attempting to avoid the rain, I turned on my mobile phone's torch to light my way. My mind continually drifted to those sheltering inside: What are they doing now? What thoughts fill their minds? What are they experiencing? The cold was piercing. I imagined children curled under damp covers, parents shifting constantly to keep them warm.

When I opened the door to my apartment, the icy doorknob served as a understated yet stark reminder of the hardships endured across Gaza in these harsh winter conditions. I walked into my apartment and was overwhelmed by the guilt of possessing shelter when a multitude remained unprotected to the storm.

The Midnight Hour Escalates

During the darkest hours, the storm reached its peak. Outside, makeshift covers on damaged glass sagged and flapped violently, while metal sheets broke away and fell with a clatter. Above it all came the piercing, fearful cries of children, piercing the darkness. I felt completely helpless.

During recent days, the rain has been relentless. Freezing, pouring, and carried by strong winds, it has flooded makeshift homes, flooded makeshift camps and turned open ground into mud. In other places, this might be called “bad weather”. In Gaza, it is endured in a state of exposure and abandonment.

The Harshest Days

Palestinians know this time of year as al-Arba’iniya; the fourty most severe days of winter, commencing 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. Typically, it is faced with preparation and shelter. Currently, Gaza has neither. The cold bites through homes, streets are vacant and people just persevere.

But the danger of winter is far from theoretical. Early on the Sunday before Christmas, recovery efforts 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 remain missing. Such collapses are not the result of fresh strikes, but the outcome of homes weakened by months of bombardment and succumbing to winter rain. Not long ago, an infant in Khan Younis passed away from exposure to the cold.

Fragile Shelters

Observing the camp nearest my home, I saw the consequences up close. Inadequate coverings strained under the weight of water, mattresses floated and clothes were perpetually moist, always damp. Each step highlighted how fragile these shelters were and how close the rain and cold came to taking life and health for hundreds of thousands living in tents and overcrowded shelters.

Most of these people have already been displaced, many repeatedly. Homes are lost. Neighbourhoods razed. Winter has come to Gaza, but shelter from its fury has not. It has come lacking adequate housing, with no power, lacking heat.

Students in the Storm

As a university lecturer in Gaza, this weather weighs heavily on me. My students are not figures in a report; they are young people I speak to; intelligent, determined, but extremely fatigued. Most participate in digital sessions from tents; others from cramped quarters where personal space doesn't exist and connectivity intermittent. A significant number of pupils have already lost family members. Most have been rendered homeless. 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—projects, due dates—turn into moral negotiations, dictated every moment by concern for students’ security, heat and ability to find refuge.

When the storm rages, I am constantly preoccupied about them. Are they dry? Are they warm? Could the storm have shredded through their shelter as they attempted to rest? For those remaining in apartments, or damaged structures, there is no heating. With electricity largely unavailable and fuel scarce, warmth comes mostly via wearing multiple layers and using any remaining covers. Nonetheless, cold nights are intolerable. How then those living in tents?

Aid and Abandonment

Figures show that more than a million people in Gaza reside in temporary housing. Aid supplies, including thermal blankets, have been inadequate. Amid the last tempest, humanitarian partners reported delivering coverings, shelters and sleeping materials to numerous households. In reality, however, this assistance was frequently felt to be patchy and insufficient, limited to band-aid measures that were largely ineffective against ongoing suffering to cold, wind and rain. Tents collapse. Sicknesses, hypothermia, and infections linked to damp conditions are rising.

This goes beyond an unexpected catastrophe. Winter is an annual event. People in Gaza understand this failure not as misfortune, but as being forsaken. People speak of how critical supplies are blocked or slowed, while attempts to repair damaged homes are frequently blocked. Community efforts have tried to make do, to hand out tarps, yet they remain limited by bureaucratic barriers. The failure is political and humanitarian. Remedies are known, but are withheld.

A Symbolic Season

The factor that intensifies this hardship especially heartbreaking is how preventable it is. It is unconscionable to study, raise children, or fight illness standing knee-high in cold water inside a tent. No student should fear the rain damaging their precious phone. Rain lays bare just how vulnerable survival is. It strains physiques worn down by anxiety, fatigue, and loss.

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