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The time was about 8:30 PM on a Thursday when I made my way home in Gaza City. The wind howled, forcing me inside any longer, so I had to walk. At first, it was only a light drizzle, but following a brief walk the rain intensified abruptly. This was expected. I took shelter by a tent, rubbing my palms together to draw some warmth. A young boy had positioned himself selling sweet treats. We exchanged a few words as I waited, although he appeared disengaged. I noticed the cookies were hastily covered in plastic, dampened from the drizzle, and I wondered if he’d find buyers before the night ended. A deep chill permeated the air.

A Walk Through a City of Tents

As I walked along al-Wehda Street in Gaza City, tents lined 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. Rushing forward, seeking escape from the rain, I switched on my mobile phone's torch to light my way. I couldn't stop thinking to those huddled within: How are they passing the time now? What are they thinking? How do they feel? The cold was piercing. I envisioned children curled under wet blankets, parents moving restlessly to keep them warm.

Upon opening the door to my apartment, the cold metal served as a understated yet stark reminder of the hardships endured across Gaza in these harsh winter conditions. I entered my apartment and couldn't shake the guilt of possessing shelter when countless others faced exposure to the storm.

The Midnight Hour Worsens

As midnight passed, the storm reached its peak. Outside, tarps on broken panes billowed and tore, while tin roofing tore loose and fell with a clatter. Above it all came the piercing, fearful cries of children, piercing the darkness. I felt utterly powerless.

For the last fortnight, the rain has been unending. Cold, heavy, and driven 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 endured in a state of exposure and abandonment.

The Cruelest Season

Residents refer to this time of year as al-Arba’iniya; the 40 coldest and harshest days of winter, starting from late December and continuing through the end of January. It is the true beginning of winter, the moment when the season shows its true power. Normally, it is weathered through preparation and shelter. Currently, Gaza has neither. The chill penetrates through homes, streets are vacant and people simply endure.

But the threat posed by the cold is no longer abstract. In the early hours of Sunday before Christmas, recovery efforts recovered the bodies of two children after the roof of a shelled home collapsed in northern Gaza, rescuing five others, including a child and two women. Two people remain missing. These incidents are not new attacks, but the result of homes weakened by months of bombardment and finally undone by winter rain. In recent days, an infant in Khan Younis succumbed to exposure to the cold.

A Life in Tents

Passing by the camp nearest my home, I observed the results up close. Inadequate coverings sagged under the weight of water, mattresses were adrift and clothes hung damply, incapable of drying. Each step reminded me how precarious these dwellings are and how close the rain and cold threatened life and health for a vast population living in tents and overcrowded shelters.

The majority of these individuals have already been forced from their homes, many on multiple occasions. Homes are destroyed. Neighbourhoods leveled. Winter has descended upon Gaza, but defense against it has not. It has come devoid of safe refuge, without electricity, without heating.

The Weight on Education

Being an educator in Gaza, this weather causes deep concern. My students are not figures in a report; they are faces I recognize; intelligent, determined, but profoundly exhausted. Most attend online classes from tents; others from cramped quarters where solitude is unattainable and connectivity intermittent. Many of my students have already experienced bereavement. Most have seen their houses destroyed. Yet they still try to study. Their resilience is extraordinary, but it should not be required in this way.

In Gaza, what would usually be routine academic practices—tasks, schedules—transform into questions of conscience, dictated every moment by anxiety over students’ security, heat and proximity to protection.

When the storm rages, I find myself thinking about them. Is their shelter holding? Is there heat? Could the storm have shredded through their shelter as they attempted to rest? For those still living in apartments, or the shells that are left, there is no heating. With electricity largely unavailable and fuel scarce, warmth comes mainly from wearing multiple layers and using whatever blankets are left. Despite this, cold nights are intolerable. How then those living in tents?

Aid and Abandonment

Agencies state that well over a million people in Gaza exist in makeshift accommodations. Aid supplies, including insulated tents, have been far from enough. During the recent storm, relief groups reported distributing tarpaulins, tents and bedding to thousands of families. For those affected, however, this assistance was widely experienced as uneven and inadequate, limited to short-term fixes that did little against extended hardship to cold, wind and rain. Shelters fail. Sicknesses, hypothermia, and infections associated with damp conditions are on the upswing.

This is not an unforeseen disaster. Winter arrives cyclically. People in Gaza understand this failure not as bad luck, but as being forsaken. People speak of how necessary items are hindered or postponed, while attempts to reinforce weakened structures are repeatedly obstructed. Local initiatives have tried to find solutions, to distribute plastic sheeting, yet they continue to be hampered by restrictions on imports. The culpability lies in political and humanitarian. Solutions exist, but are kept out.

A Preventable Suffering

The factor that intensifies this hardship especially heartbreaking is how preventable it is. 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 exposes just how fragile life has become. It strains physiques worn down by stress, exhaustion, and grief.

This year's chill coincides with the Christmas season that, for millions, epitomizes warmth, refuge and care for the neediest. In Palestine, that {symbolism