🔗 Share this article

It was approximately 8:30 PM on a weekday evening when I returned home in Gaza City. Gusts of wind blew, and I couldn’t stay out any longer, so I had to walk. At first, it was only a light drizzle, but a short distance later the rain became a downpour. That wasn’t surprising. I stopped near a tent, rubbing my palms together to fight off the chill. A young boy sat nearby selling homemade cookies. We shared brief remarks during my pause, although he appeared disengaged. I noticed the cookies were loosely wrapped in plastic, moist from the drizzle, and I wondered if he’d manage to sell them all before the night ended. The cold seeped into everything.

A Walk Through a Place of Tents

While traversing al-Wehda Street in Gaza City, makeshift shelters crowded both sides of the road. An eerie silence replaced voices from inside them, just the noise of torrential rain and the whistle of the wind. Quickening my pace, attempting to avoid the rain, I activated my mobile phone's torch to see the road ahead. I couldn't stop thinking to those huddled within: What occupies them now? What are they thinking? What are they experiencing? A severe chill gripped the air. I envisioned children nestled under damp covers, parents adjusting repeatedly to keep them warm.

Upon opening the door to my apartment, the freezing handle served as a understated yet stark reminder of the struggles borne across Gaza in these brutal winter climate. I walked into my apartment and felt consumed by the guilt of having a roof when a multitude remained unprotected to the storm.

The Midnight Hour Intensifies

As midnight passed, the storm reached its peak. Outside, plastic sheeting on shattered windows billowed and tore, while metal sheets tore loose and fell with a clatter. Overriding the noise came the piercing, fearful cries of children, piercing the darkness. I felt totally incapable.

Over the past two weeks, the rain has been unending. Cold, heavy, and driven by strong winds, it has soaked tents, flooded makeshift camps and turned the soil into mud. In other places, this might be called “inclement weather”. In Gaza, it is endured in a state of exposure and abandonment.

The Harshest Days

Palestinians know this time of year as al-Arba’iniya; the most bitter forty days of winter, starting from late December and persisting to the end of January. It is the true beginning of winter, the moment when the season shows its true power. Typically, it is weathered through preparation and shelter. Currently, Gaza has none of these. The frost seeps through homes, streets are empty and people merely survive.

But the danger of winter is no longer abstract. Early on the Sunday before Christmas, rescue operations retrieved the remains 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 have not been found. These structural failures are not the result of fresh strikes, 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.

Precarious Existence

Walking past the camp nearest my home, I observed the results up close. Flimsy tarpaulins buckled beneath the weight of water, mattresses floated and clothes remained wet, incapable of drying. Each step highlighted how precarious these dwellings are and how close the rain and cold came to taking life and health for hundreds of thousands living in tents and overcrowded shelters.

Most of these people have already been forced from their homes, many several times over. Homes are destroyed. Neighbourhoods flattened. Winter has descended upon Gaza, but defense against it has not. It has come lacking adequate housing, with no power, devoid of warmth.

Students in the Storm

In my role as a professor in Gaza, this weather causes deep concern. My students are not distant names; they are individuals I know; smart, persistent, but extremely fatigued. Most attend online classes from tents; others from packed rooms where personal space doesn't exist and connectivity unreliable. A significant number of pupils have already experienced bereavement. Most have been rendered homeless. Yet they continue their education. Their perseverance is astounding, but it ought not be necessary in this way.

In Gaza, what would usually be routine academic practices—tasks, schedules—become moral negotiations, shaped each day by uncertainty about students’ safety, warmth and access to shelter.

During nights like these, I cannot help but wonder about them. Is their shelter holding? Do they feel any warmth? Did the wind tear through their shelter during the night? For those residing in apartments, or damaged structures, there is no heating. With electricity largely unavailable and fuel scarce, warmth comes mainly from wearing multiple layers and using the few bedding items available. Nonetheless, cold nights are unbearable. How then those living in tents?

Political Failure

Figures show that well over a million people in Gaza reside in temporary housing. Aid supplies, including insulated tents, have been far from enough. When the cyclone hit, relief groups reported delivering tarpaulins, tents and bedding to numerous households. On the ground, however, this assistance was often perceived as patchy and insufficient, limited to temporary solutions that did little against extended hardship to cold, wind and rain. Structures give way. Chest infections, hypothermia, and infections caused by damp conditions are rising.

This goes beyond an surprise calamity. Winter is an annual event. People in Gaza interpret this shortcoming not as fate, but as being forsaken. People speak of how necessary items are restricted or delayed, while attempts to fix broken houses are consistently hampered. Community efforts have tried to find solutions, to provide coverings, yet they continue to be hampered by what is allowed to enter. The failure is political and humanitarian. Solutions exist, but are prevented from arriving.

A Symbolic Season

The aspect that renders this pain especially painful is how avoidable it could have been. No individual ought to study, raise children, or combat disease standing knee-high in cold water inside a tent. No student should fear the rain destroying their final textbook. Rain exposes just how precarious existence is. It challenges health worn down by pressure, weariness, and sorrow.

The current cold season coincides with the Christmas season that, for millions, epitomizes warmth, refuge and care for the neediest. In Palestine, that {symbolism