🔗 Share this article

It was approximately 8:30 PM on a weekday evening when I made my way home in Gaza City. The wind howled, forcing me inside any longer, so walking was my only option. In the beginning, it was just a gentle sprinkle, but after about 200 metres the rain became a downpour. This was expected. I paused beside a tent, rubbing my palms together to fight off the chill. A young boy had positioned himself selling baked goods. We shared brief remarks as I waited, but his attention was elsewhere. I noticed the cookies were loosely wrapped in plastic, already soggy from the drizzle, and I questioned if he’d have enough to sell before the night ended. A deep chill permeated the air.

A Walk Through a City 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, only the sound of falling water and the whistle of the wind. Quickening my pace, trying to dodge the rain, I activated my mobile phone's torch to light my way. I couldn't stop thinking to those sheltering inside: How are they passing the time now? What is their state of mind? How do they feel? The cold was piercing. I pictured children huddled under soaked bedding, parents adjusting repeatedly to keep them warm.

When I opened the door to my apartment, the icy doorknob 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 having a roof when so many were exposed to the storm.

The Darkness Intensifies

During the darkest hours, the storm grew stronger. Outside, tarps on broken panes sagged and flapped violently, while corrugated metal ripped free and crashed to the ground. Above it all came the sharp, panicked screams of children, piercing the darkness. I felt utterly powerless.

During recent days, the rain has been unending. Freezing, pouring, and carried by strong winds, it has drenched shelters, inundated temporary settlements and turned open ground into mud. Elsewhere, this might be called “poor conditions”. In Gaza, it is lived with exposure and abandonment.

Al-Arba’iniya

Locals call this time of year as al-Arba’iniya; the fourty most severe days of winter, starting from late December and persisting to the end of January. It is the definite start of winter, the moment when the season unleashes its intensity. Ordinarily, it is endured with preparation and shelter. Now, Gaza has neither. The frost seeps through homes, streets are deserted and people simply endure.

But the threat posed by the cold is far from theoretical. Early on the Sunday before Christmas, civil defense teams 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 caused by ongoing hostilities, but the result of homes compromised after months of bombardment and succumbing to winter rain. In recent days, an eight-month-old baby girl in Khan Younis succumbed to exposure to the cold.

A Life in Tents

Passing by the camp nearest my home, I witnessed the impact up close. Flimsy tarpaulins buckled beneath the weight of water, mattresses were adrift and clothes hung damply, always damp. Each step reminded me how fragile these shelters were and how close the rain and cold threatened life and health for a vast population living in tents and overcrowded shelters.

Most of these people have already been displaced, many on multiple occasions. Homes are gone. Neighbourhoods razed. Winter has come to Gaza, but shelter from its fury has not. It has come devoid of safe refuge, in darkness, devoid of warmth.

The Weight on Education

Being an educator in Gaza, this weather causes deep concern. My students are not mere statistics; they are faces I recognize; intelligent, determined, but profoundly exhausted. Most attend online classes from tents; others from cramped quarters where privacy is impossible and connectivity sporadic. Countless learners have already experienced bereavement. Most have been rendered homeless. Yet they still try to study. Their perseverance is astounding, but it ought not be necessary in this way.

In Gaza, what would usually be routine academic practices—tasks, schedules—transform into ethical dilemmas, shaped each day by concern for students’ security, heat and proximity to protection.

During nights like these, I find myself thinking about them. Do they have dryness? Do they feel any warmth? Could the storm have shredded through their shelter during the night? For those residing in apartments, or the shells that are left, there is no heating. With electricity scarce and fuel rare, warmth comes primarily through donning extra clothing and using whatever blankets are left. Despite this, cold nights are unbearable. What, then those living in tents?

Political Failure

Reports indicate that well over a million people in Gaza reside in temporary housing. Relief items, including weatherproof shelters, have been far from enough. During the recent storm, aid organizations reported delivering plastic sheets, tents and mattresses to thousands of families. On the ground, however, this assistance was frequently felt to be uneven and inadequate, limited to band-aid measures that did little against extended hardship to cold, wind and rain. Shelters fail. Respiratory illnesses, hypothermia, and infections associated with damp conditions are increasing.

This is not an surprise calamity. Winter arrives cyclically. People in Gaza view this crisis not as bad luck, but as abandonment. People speak of how necessary items are hindered or postponed, while attempts to repair damaged homes are repeatedly obstructed. Grassroots projects have tried to make do, to hand out tarps, yet they remain limited by restrictions on imports. The culpability lies in political and humanitarian. Remedies are known, but are prevented from arriving.

A Symbolic Season

The factor that intensifies this hardship especially painful is how preventable it is. No one should have to study, raise children, or battle sickness standing ankle-deep in cold water inside a tent. No learner should dread the rain ruining their last notebook. Rain exposes just how precarious existence is. It tests bodies worn down by anxiety, fatigue, and loss.

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