🔗 Share this article

The time was approximately 8:30 PM on a Thursday when I made my way home in Gaza City. A strong wind was blowing, making it impossible to remain any longer, so walking was my only option. In the beginning, it was merely a soft rain, but a short distance later the rain suddenly grew heavier. This was expected. I took shelter by a tent, rubbing my palms together to generate a little heat. A young boy sat nearby selling sweet treats. We spoke briefly during my pause, although he appeared disengaged. I saw the cookies were loosely wrapped in plastic, moist from the drizzle, and I pondered if he’d manage to sell them all before the night ended. A deep chill permeated the air.

A Journey Through a Landscape of Tents

As I walked along al-Wehda Street in Gaza City, canvas structures flanked both sides of the road. An eerie silence replaced voices from inside them, merely the din of falling water and the moan of the wind. As I hurried on, trying to dodge the rain, I activated 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 thoughts fill their minds? What are they experiencing? It was bitterly cold. I envisioned children curled under damp covers, parents moving restlessly to keep them warm.

Upon opening the door to my apartment, the freezing handle served as a understated yet stark reminder of the suffering faced across Gaza in these severe cold season. I stepped inside my apartment and felt consumed by the guilt of possessing shelter when countless others faced exposure to the storm.

The Night Intensifies

As midnight passed, the storm grew stronger. Outside, plastic sheeting on broken panes sagged and flapped violently, while metal sheets broke away and crashed to the ground. Cutting through the chaos came the piercing, fearful cries of children, piercing the darkness. I felt totally incapable.

Over the past two weeks, the rain has been relentless. Freezing, pouring, and carried by strong winds, it has drenched shelters, inundated temporary settlements and turned bare earth into mud. In other places, 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 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 faced with preparation and shelter. Now, Gaza has no such defenses. The chill penetrates through homes, streets are deserted and people just persevere.

But the threat posed by the cold is far from theoretical. In the early hours of Sunday before Christmas, recovery efforts 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 are still unaccounted for. Such collapses are not new attacks, but the result of homes weakened by months of bombardment and succumbing to winter rain. In recent days, an infant in Khan Younis died of exposure to the cold.

Fragile Shelters

Passing by the camp nearest my home, I saw the consequences 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 vulnerable these tents are and how close the rain and cold threatened life and health for countless individuals living in tents and overcrowded shelters.

A great number of these residents have already been uprooted, many several times over. Homes are lost. Neighbourhoods leveled. Winter has arrived in Gaza, but defense against it has not. It has come without proper shelter, with no power, lacking heat.

The Weight on Education

Being an educator in Gaza, this weather causes deep concern. My students are not figures in a report; they are young people I speak to; intelligent, determined, but deeply weary. Most attend online classes from tents; others from packed rooms where personal space doesn't exist and connectivity sporadic. Countless learners have already lost family members. Most have seen their houses destroyed. Yet they persist in learning. Their perseverance is astounding, but it should not be required in this way.

In Gaza, what would usually be routine academic practices—assignments, deadlines—transform into moral negotiations, dictated every moment by uncertainty about students’ safety, warmth and proximity to protection.

During nights like these, I find myself thinking 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 the shells that are left, there is a lack of heat. With electricity largely unavailable and fuel rare, warmth comes mainly from wearing multiple layers and using any remaining covers. Even so, cold nights are intolerable. What, then those living in tents?

Aid and Abandonment

Reports indicate that over a million people in Gaza reside in temporary housing. Aid supplies, including weatherproof shelters, have been insufficient. Amid the last tempest, aid organizations reported providing plastic sheets, tents and mattresses to numerous households. For those affected, however, this assistance was widely experienced as uneven and inadequate, limited to short-term fixes that offered scant protection against extended hardship to cold, wind and rain. Structures give way. Sicknesses, hypothermia, and infections associated with damp conditions are increasing.

This cannot be described as an unexpected catastrophe. Winter arrives cyclically. People in Gaza interpret this shortcoming not as bad luck, but as being forsaken. People speak of how essential materials are restricted or delayed, while attempts to reinforce weakened structures are repeatedly obstructed. Local initiatives have tried to make do, to distribute plastic sheeting, yet they remain limited by what is allowed to enter. The failure is political and humanitarian. Remedies are known, but are kept out.

A Symbolic Season

The factor that intensifies this hardship especially heartbreaking is how avoidable it could have been. It is unconscionable to study, raise children, or battle sickness standing surrounded by cold water inside a tent. No learner should dread the rain destroying their final textbook. Rain exposes just how vulnerable survival is. It challenges health worn down by stress, exhaustion, and grief.

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