🔗 Share this article

The clock read about 8:30 PM on a Thursday when I returned home in Gaza City. Gusts of wind blew, forcing me inside any longer, leaving me to walk. Initially, it was just a gentle sprinkle, but a short distance later the rain suddenly grew heavier. It came as no shock. I paused beside a tent, clapping my hands to generate a little heat. A young boy had positioned himself selling sweet treats. We spoke briefly as I waited, although he appeared disengaged. I noticed the cookies were poorly packaged in plastic, dampened from the drizzle, and I wondered if he’d have enough to sell before the night ended. The cold seeped into everything.

A Journey Through a Landscape of Tents

As I walked along al-Wehda Street in Gaza City, tents lined both sides of the road. No sounds of conversation came from inside them, just the noise of torrential rain and the moan of the wind. As I hurried on, trying to dodge the rain, I activated my mobile phone's torch to illuminate the path. I couldn't stop thinking to those taking refuge within: What are they doing now? What is their state of mind? What are they experiencing? A severe chill gripped the air. I imagined children curled under damp covers, parents adjusting repeatedly to keep them warm.

Upon opening the door to my apartment, the cold metal served as a understated yet stark reminder of the suffering faced across Gaza in these severe cold season. I walked into my apartment and felt consumed by the guilt of enjoying a dry home when countless others faced exposure to the storm.

The Midnight Hour Worsens

During the darkest hours, the storm reached its peak. Outside, plastic sheeting on shattered windows sagged and flapped violently, while metal sheets tore loose and slammed down. Above it all came the piercing, fearful cries of children, shattering the darkness. I felt utterly powerless.

For the last fortnight, the rain has been incessant. Freezing, pouring, and carried by strong winds, it has soaked tents, flooded makeshift camps 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 fourty most severe days of winter, beginning in late December and lasting until the end of January. It is the true beginning of winter, the moment when the season unleashes its intensity. Normally, it is endured with preparation and shelter. Currently, Gaza has neither. The chill penetrates through homes, streets are empty and people merely survive.

But the peril of the season is now very real. On the Sunday morning before Christmas, rescue operations retrieved the remains of two children after the roof of a bombarded structure collapsed in northern Gaza, saving five more people, including a child and two women. Two people remain missing. Such collapses are not new attacks, but the outcome of homes weakened by months of bombardment and ultimately defeated by winter rain. Earlier this month, a young child in Khan Younis passed away from exposure to the cold.

Fragile Shelters

Passing by the camp nearest my home, I observed the results up close. Inadequate coverings strained under the weight of water, mattresses bobbed in water and clothes remained wet, 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 forced from their homes, many repeatedly. Homes are lost. Neighbourhoods leveled. Winter has descended upon Gaza, but protection from it has not. It has come lacking adequate housing, with no power, lacking heat.

The Weight on Education

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 extremely fatigued. Most attend online classes from tents; others from cramped quarters where privacy is impossible and connectivity intermittent. Many of my students have already experienced bereavement. Most have seen their houses destroyed. Yet they continue their education. Their perseverance is astounding, but it ought not be necessary in this way.

In Gaza, what would normally count as routine academic practices—tasks, schedules—turn into moral negotiations, influenced daily by anxiety over students’ security, heat and proximity to protection.

When the storm rages, I cannot help but wonder about them. Is their shelter holding? Is there heat? Did the wind tear through their shelter during the night? For those residing in apartments, or the shells that are left, there is no heating. With electricity mostly absent and fuel in short supply, warmth comes mainly from wearing multiple layers and using any remaining covers. Despite this, cold nights are intolerable. How then those living in tents?

Political Failure

Agencies state that more than a million people in Gaza live in shelters. Relief items, including weatherproof shelters, have been far from enough. Amid the last tempest, relief groups reported distributing plastic sheets, tents and mattresses to a multitude of people. For those affected, however, this assistance was frequently felt to be inconsistent and lacking, limited to band-aid measures that did little against prolonged exposure to cold, wind and rain. Tents collapse. Respiratory illnesses, hypothermia, and infections linked to damp conditions are rising.

This is not an unforeseen disaster. Winter is an annual event. People in Gaza view this crisis not as misfortune, but as abandonment. People speak of how essential materials are hindered or postponed, while attempts to fix broken houses are repeatedly obstructed. Community efforts have tried to find solutions, to distribute plastic sheeting, yet they remain limited by what is allowed to enter. The failure is political and humanitarian. Answers are available, but are prevented from arriving.

A Preventable Suffering

What makes this suffering especially agonizing is how unnecessary it should be. No one should have to study, raise children, or combat disease standing surrounded by cold water inside a tent. No learner should dread the rain damaging their precious phone. Rain lays bare just how precarious existence is. It challenges health worn down by pressure, weariness, and sorrow.

The current cold season occurs alongside the Christmas season that, for millions, symbolises warmth, refuge and care for the most vulnerable. In Palestine, that {symbolism