🔗 Share this article

The clock read approximately 8:30 PM on a weekday evening when I headed back home in Gaza City. The wind howled, making it impossible to remain any longer, so walking was my only option. At first, it was merely a soft rain, but after about 200 metres the rain suddenly grew heavier. This was expected. I took shelter by a tent, trying to warm my hands to generate a little heat. A young boy had positioned himself selling baked goods. We exchanged a few words as I waited, although he appeared disengaged. I saw the cookies were loosely wrapped in plastic, dampened from the drizzle, and I pondered if he’d find buyers before the night ended. The cold seeped into everything.

A Walk Through a City of Tents

While traversing al-Wehda Street in Gaza City, makeshift shelters crowded both sides of the road. No sounds of conversation came from inside them, only the sound of rain pouring down and the moan of the wind. As I hurried on, seeking escape from the rain, I activated my mobile phone's torch to see the road ahead. My thoughts kept returning 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 soaked bedding, parents moving restlessly to keep them warm.

As I unlocked the door to my apartment, the freezing handle served as a understated yet stark reminder of the hardships endured across Gaza in these severe cold season. I walked into my apartment and felt consumed by the guilt of enjoying a dry home when a multitude remained unprotected to the storm.

The Darkness Worsens

As midnight passed, the storm grew stronger. Outside, plastic sheeting on broken panes sagged and flapped violently, while corrugated metal tore loose and crashed to the ground. Overriding the noise came the desperate, terrified shouts of children, piercing the darkness. I felt utterly powerless.

For the last fortnight, the rain has been relentless. Cold, heavy, and driven by strong winds, it has soaked tents, inundated temporary settlements and turned bare earth into mud. In different contexts, this might be called “bad weather”. In Gaza, it is experienced amidst exposure and abandonment.

The Cruelest Season

Palestinians know 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 definite start of winter, the moment when the season reveals its full force. Ordinarily, it is weathered through preparation and shelter. Now, Gaza has no such defenses. The cold bites through homes, streets are vacant and people simply endure.

But the danger of winter is far from theoretical. Early on the Sunday before Christmas, recovery efforts retrieved the remains of two children after the roof of a bombarded structure collapsed in northern Gaza, saving five more people, including a child and two women. Two people are still unaccounted for. Such collapses are not new attacks, but the outcome of homes compromised after months of bombardment and succumbing to winter rain. Not long ago, a young child in Khan Younis passed away from exposure to the cold.

Precarious Existence

Walking past 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, never fully drying. Each step highlighted how vulnerable these tents are and how close the rain and cold came to taking life and health for a vast population living in tents and packed sanctuaries.

A great number of these residents have already been uprooted, many repeatedly. Homes are gone. Neighbourhoods flattened. Winter has descended upon Gaza, but protection from it has not. It has come without proper shelter, with no power, lacking heat.

The Weight on Education

In my role as a professor in Gaza, this weather causes deep concern. My students are not figures in a report; they are faces I recognize; intelligent, determined, but deeply weary. Most participate in digital sessions from tents; others from packed rooms where personal space doesn't exist and connectivity intermittent. A significant number of pupils have already suffered personal loss. Most have seen their houses destroyed. Yet they still try to study. Their perseverance is astounding, but it ought not be necessary in this way.

In Gaza, what would typically constitute routine academic practices—assignments, deadlines—turn into questions of conscience, dictated every moment by concern for students’ well-being, comfort and access to shelter.

During nights like these, I cannot help but wonder about them. Are they dry? Is there heat? Has the gale ripped through their shelter as they attempted to rest? For those still living in apartments, or the shells that are left, there is an absence of warmth. With electricity mostly absent and fuel rare, warmth comes primarily through bundling up and using the few bedding items available. Despite this, cold nights are excruciating. What, then those living in tents?

Aid and Abandonment

Reports indicate that well over a million people in Gaza live in shelters. Aid supplies, including weatherproof shelters, have been insufficient. Amid the last tempest, relief groups reported delivering plastic sheets, tents and mattresses to a multitude of people. For those affected, however, this assistance was widely experienced as patchy and insufficient, limited to temporary solutions that were largely ineffective against ongoing suffering to cold, wind and rain. Tents collapse. Sicknesses, hypothermia, and infections caused by damp conditions are rising.

This is not an unforeseen disaster. Winter is an annual event. People in Gaza view this crisis not as bad luck, but as neglect. People speak of how critical supplies are blocked or slowed, while attempts to fix broken houses are consistently hampered. Local initiatives have tried to make do, to provide coverings, yet they continue to be hampered by bureaucratic barriers. The root cause is political and humanitarian. Remedies are known, but are prevented from arriving.

A Preventable Suffering

The aspect that renders this pain especially heartbreaking is how avoidable it could have been. It is unconscionable to study, raise children, or battle sickness standing knee-high 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 tests bodies 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 disadvantaged. In Palestine, that {symbolism