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The clock read approximately 8:30 PM on a Thursday when I headed back home in Gaza City. A strong wind was blowing, making it impossible to remain any longer, so I had to walk. In the beginning, it was only a light drizzle, but following a brief walk the rain intensified abruptly. This was expected. I stopped near a tent, rubbing my palms together to generate a little heat. A young boy had positioned himself selling homemade cookies. We exchanged a few words as I waited, though he didn’t seem interested. I observed the cookies were hastily covered in plastic, moist from the drizzle, and I pondered if he’d have enough to sell before the night ended. The cold seeped into everything.

A Journey Through a Landscape of Tents

While traversing al-Wehda Street in Gaza City, canvas structures flanked both sides of the road. No sounds of conversation came from inside them, merely the din of torrential rain and the moan of the wind. Rushing forward, attempting to avoid the rain, I switched on my mobile phone's torch to light my way. My mind continually drifted to those taking refuge within: What occupies them now? What are they thinking? How do they feel? The cold was piercing. I imagined children huddled under damp covers, parents moving restlessly to keep them warm.

As I unlocked the door to my apartment, the cold metal served as a quiet but powerful reminder of the hardships endured across Gaza in these harsh winter conditions. I stepped inside my apartment and was overwhelmed by the guilt of having a roof when so many were exposed to the storm.

The Night Intensifies

As midnight passed, the storm reached its peak. Outside, plastic sheeting on damaged glass billowed and tore, while metal sheets broke away and slammed down. Overriding the noise came the piercing, fearful cries of children, cutting through the darkness. I felt utterly powerless.

Over the past two weeks, the rain has been unending. Freezing, pouring, and carried by strong winds, it has drenched shelters, inundated temporary settlements and turned bare earth into mud. Elsewhere, this might be called “bad weather”. In Gaza, it is endured in a state of exposure and abandonment.

The Cruelest Season

Locals call this time of year as al-Arba’iniya; the most bitter forty days of winter, commencing in late December and continuing through the end of January. It is the true beginning of winter, the moment when the season unleashes its intensity. Normally, it is faced with preparation and shelter. Currently, Gaza has neither. The chill penetrates through homes, streets are empty and people just persevere.

But the threat posed by the cold is no longer abstract. Early on the Sunday before Christmas, civil defense teams found the victims of two children after the roof of a shelled home collapsed in northern Gaza, freeing five additional individuals, including a child and two women. Two people remain missing. These incidents are not new attacks, but the consequence of homes damaged from months of bombardment and ultimately defeated by winter rain. Earlier this month, an infant in Khan Younis passed away from exposure to the cold.

Fragile Shelters

Passing by the camp nearest my home, I witnessed the impact up close. Inadequate coverings sagged under the weight of water, mattresses bobbed in water and clothes hung damply, never fully drying. Each step reinforced how fragile these shelters were and how close the rain and cold came to claiming life and health for a vast population living in tents and packed sanctuaries.

A great number of these residents have already been forced from their homes, many several times over. Homes are gone. Neighbourhoods razed. Winter has come to Gaza, but shelter from its fury has not. It has come without proper shelter, without electricity, without heating.

The Weight on Education

In my role as a professor in Gaza, this weather is a heavy burden. My students are not figures in a report; they are faces I recognize; bright, resilient, but profoundly exhausted. Most attend online classes from tents; others from packed rooms where solitude is unattainable and connectivity sporadic. Countless learners have already suffered personal loss. Most have lost their homes. Yet they persist in learning. 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—become ethical dilemmas, shaped each day by concern for students’ security, heat and access to shelter.

During nights like these, I am constantly preoccupied about them. Do they have dryness? Is there heat? Did the wind tear through their shelter as they attempted to rest? For those still living in apartments, or what remains of them, there is no heating. With electricity scarce and fuel scarce, warmth comes mainly from donning extra clothing and using whatever blankets are left. Despite this, cold nights are unbearable. What about those living in tents?

Political Failure

Agencies state that well over a million people in Gaza live in shelters. Aid supplies, including weatherproof shelters, have been insufficient. When the cyclone hit, relief groups reported delivering plastic sheets, tents and mattresses to a multitude of people. In reality, however, this assistance was widely experienced as inconsistent and lacking, limited to temporary solutions that offered scant protection against ongoing suffering to cold, wind and rain. Shelters fail. Sicknesses, hypothermia, and infections associated with damp conditions are on the upswing.

This cannot be described as an unforeseen disaster. Winter arrives cyclically. People in Gaza interpret this shortcoming not as fate, but as abandonment. People speak of how critical supplies are hindered or postponed, while attempts to reinforce weakened structures are consistently hampered. Community efforts have tried to make do, to distribute plastic sheeting, yet they remain limited by bureaucratic barriers. The culpability lies in political and humanitarian. Answers are available, but are kept out.

A Preventable Suffering

The aspect that renders this pain especially agonizing is how unnecessary it should be. No individual ought to study, raise children, or battle sickness standing ankle-deep in 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 anxiety, fatigue, and loss.

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