🔗 Share this article

The clock read around 8:30 PM on a Thursday when I made my way home in Gaza City. The wind howled, and I couldn’t stay out any longer, so I had to walk. Initially, it was merely a soft rain, but a short distance later the rain intensified abruptly. This was expected. 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 while I stood there, although he appeared disengaged. 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. The freezing temperature invaded every space.

A Journey Through a Landscape of Tents

While traversing al-Wehda Street in Gaza City, tents lined both sides of the road. No sounds of conversation came from inside them, merely the din of falling water and the roar of the wind. As I hurried on, seeking escape from the rain, I switched on my mobile phone's torch to illuminate the path. My mind continually drifted to those huddled within: How are they passing the time now? What are they thinking? How do they feel? A severe chill gripped the air. I imagined children nestled under soaked bedding, parents moving restlessly to keep them warm.

When I opened the door to my apartment, the freezing handle served as a understated yet stark reminder of the struggles borne across Gaza in these severe cold season. I entered my apartment and was overwhelmed by the guilt of possessing shelter when so many were exposed to the storm.

The Midnight Hour Escalates

As midnight passed, the storm intensified. Outside, makeshift covers on broken panes whipped and strained, while corrugated metal ripped free and slammed down. Overriding the noise came the sharp, panicked screams of children, piercing the darkness. I felt completely helpless.

For the last fortnight, the rain has been incessant. Cold, heavy, and driven by strong winds, it has drenched shelters, swamped refugee areas and turned the soil into mud. In other places, this might be called “bad weather”. In Gaza, it is lived with exposure and abandonment.

Al-Arba’iniya

Palestinians know this time of year as al-Arba’iniya; the fourty most severe days of winter, commencing in late December and continuing through the end of January. It is the definite start of winter, the moment when the season reveals its full force. Normally, it is endured with preparation and shelter. Now, Gaza has none of these. The frost seeps through homes, streets are deserted and people simply endure.

But the peril of the season is far from theoretical. Early on the 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. Such collapses are not the result of fresh strikes, but the consequence of homes compromised after months of bombardment and finally undone by winter rain. In recent days, a young child in Khan Younis passed away from exposure to the cold.

Precarious Existence

Walking past the camp nearest my home, I observed the results up close. Flimsy tarpaulins sagged under the weight of water, mattresses bobbed in water and clothes hung damply, always damp. Each step reinforced how vulnerable these tents are and how close the rain and cold threatened life and health for hundreds of thousands living in tents and cramped refuges.

A great number of these residents have already been forced from their homes, many several times over. Homes are gone. Neighbourhoods flattened. Winter has descended upon Gaza, but protection from it has not. It has come devoid of safe refuge, without electricity, without heating.

A Teacher's Anguish

Being an educator in Gaza, this weather weighs heavily on me. My students are not mere statistics; they are young people I speak to; intelligent, determined, but deeply weary. Most participate in digital sessions from tents; others from cramped quarters where solitude is unattainable and connectivity sporadic. A significant number of pupils have already experienced bereavement. Most have been rendered homeless. Yet they still try to study. Their fortitude is remarkable, but it ought not be necessary in this way.

In Gaza, what would normally count as routine academic practices—tasks, schedules—transform into moral negotiations, dictated every moment by anxiety over students’ security, heat and access to shelter.

During nights like these, I am constantly preoccupied about them. Is their shelter holding? Is there heat? Did the wind tear through their shelter during the night? For those remaining in apartments, or what remains of them, there is a lack of heat. With electricity mostly absent and fuel in short supply, warmth comes mainly from donning extra clothing and using the few bedding items available. Despite this, cold nights are unbearable. What about those living in tents?

Aid and Abandonment

Reports indicate that well over a million people in Gaza reside in temporary housing. Aid supplies, including thermal blankets, have been far from enough. When the cyclone hit, humanitarian partners reported providing coverings, shelters and sleeping materials to thousands of families. On the ground, however, this assistance was frequently felt to be uneven and inadequate, limited to band-aid measures that were largely ineffective against extended hardship to cold, wind and rain. Shelters fail. Chest infections, hypothermia, and infections caused by damp conditions are increasing.

This goes beyond an unforeseen disaster. Winter comes every year. People in Gaza understand this failure not as bad luck, but as neglect. People speak of how critical supplies are hindered or postponed, while attempts to repair damaged homes are consistently hampered. Local initiatives have tried to make do, to provide coverings, yet they remain limited by what is allowed to enter. The failure is political and humanitarian. Answers are available, but are withheld.

A Preventable Suffering

What makes this suffering especially agonizing is how avoidable it could have been. No individual ought to study, raise children, or fight illness standing surrounded by cold water inside a tent. It is wrong for a pupil to worry about the rain damaging their precious phone. Rain reveals just how vulnerable survival is. It challenges health worn down by pressure, weariness, and sorrow.

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