🔗 Share this article

The time was around 8:30 PM on a weekday evening when I returned home in Gaza City. A strong wind was blowing, making it impossible to remain any longer, leaving me to walk. Initially, it was merely a soft rain, but a short distance later the rain intensified abruptly. This was expected. I paused beside a tent, trying to warm my hands to generate a little heat. A young boy sat nearby selling homemade cookies. We shared brief remarks during my pause, although he appeared disengaged. I observed the cookies were poorly packaged in plastic, already soggy from the drizzle, and I pondered if he’d manage to sell them all before the night ended. A deep chill permeated the air.

A Walk Through a Landscape of Tents

While traversing al-Wehda Street in Gaza City, makeshift shelters crowded both sides of the road. There were no voices from inside them, merely the din of torrential rain and the whistle of the wind. Quickening my pace, seeking escape from the rain, I switched on my mobile phone's torch to light my way. I couldn't stop thinking to those sheltering inside: What occupies them now? What are they thinking? How do they feel? The cold was piercing. I imagined children curled under soaked bedding, parents moving restlessly to keep them warm.

Upon opening the door to my apartment, the icy doorknob served as a subtle yet haunting reminder of the suffering faced across Gaza in these harsh winter conditions. I entered my apartment and couldn't shake the guilt of enjoying a dry home when countless others faced exposure to the storm.

The Midnight Hour Intensifies

In the middle of the night, the storm reached its peak. Outside, tarps on broken panes sagged and flapped violently, while corrugated metal broke away and fell with a clatter. Above it all came the piercing, fearful cries of children, shattering the darkness. I felt totally incapable.

For the last fortnight, the rain has been incessant. Chilly, dense, and propelled by strong winds, it has drenched shelters, inundated temporary settlements and turned open ground into mud. In different contexts, this might be called “poor conditions”. In Gaza, it is lived with exposure and abandonment.

The Harshest Days

Locals call this time of year as al-Arba’iniya; the most bitter forty days of winter, commencing in late December and persisting to the end of January. It is the true beginning of winter, the moment when the season reveals its full force. Normally, it is weathered through preparation and shelter. This year, Gaza has none of these. The frost seeps through homes, streets are deserted and people simply endure.

But the peril of the season is no longer abstract. Early on the Sunday before Christmas, rescue operations recovered the bodies of two children after the roof of a war-damaged building collapsed in northern Gaza, rescuing five others, including a child and two women. Two people have not been found. These incidents are not the result of fresh strikes, but the consequence of homes damaged from months of bombardment and ultimately defeated by winter rain. Earlier this month, an eight-month-old baby girl in Khan Younis died of exposure to the cold.

Fragile Shelters

Observing the camp nearest my home, I observed the results up close. Flimsy tarpaulins buckled beneath the weight of water, mattresses were adrift and clothes hung damply, incapable of drying. Each step reminded me how vulnerable these tents are and how close the rain and cold threatened life and health for countless individuals living in tents and packed sanctuaries.

A great number of these residents have already been displaced, many repeatedly. Homes are lost. Neighbourhoods leveled. Winter has arrived in Gaza, but protection from it has not. It has come without proper shelter, with no power, lacking heat.

Students in the Storm

As a university lecturer in Gaza, this weather causes deep concern. My students are not mere statistics; they are young people I speak to; smart, persistent, but extremely fatigued. Most participate in digital sessions from tents; others from packed rooms where personal space doesn't exist and connectivity intermittent. A significant number of pupils have already lost family members. Most have lost their homes. Yet they still try to study. Their fortitude is remarkable, but it ought not be necessary in this way.

In Gaza, what would normally count as routine academic practices—projects, due dates—turn into questions of conscience, influenced daily by concern for students’ safety, warmth and proximity to protection.

When the storm rages, I am constantly preoccupied about them. Are they dry? Is there heat? Could the storm have shredded through their shelter during the night? For those remaining in apartments, or damaged structures, there is an absence of warmth. With electricity mostly absent and fuel in short supply, warmth comes mainly from wearing multiple layers and using whatever blankets are left. Even so, cold nights are excruciating. What about those living in tents?

Aid and Abandonment

Figures show that more than a million people in Gaza reside in temporary housing. Relief items, including insulated tents, have been insufficient. Amid the last tempest, aid organizations reported providing plastic sheets, tents and mattresses to thousands of families. In reality, however, this assistance was widely experienced as patchy and insufficient, limited to short-term fixes that did little against prolonged exposure to cold, wind and rain. Tents collapse. Sicknesses, hypothermia, and infections caused by damp conditions are on the upswing.

This cannot be described as an unexpected catastrophe. Winter comes every year. People in Gaza understand this failure not as misfortune, but as being forsaken. People speak of how essential materials are blocked or slowed, while attempts to fix broken houses are repeatedly obstructed. Grassroots projects have tried to find solutions, to hand out tarps, yet they remain limited by what is allowed to enter. The root cause is political and humanitarian. Solutions exist, but are withheld.

A Symbolic Season

The aspect that renders this pain especially agonizing is how unnecessary it should be. No individual ought to study, raise children, or fight illness standing surrounded by cold water inside a tent. No learner should dread the rain destroying their final textbook. Rain reveals just how fragile life has become. 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 neediest. In Palestine, that {symbolism