🔗 Share this article

It was around 8:30 PM on a Thursday when I made my way home in Gaza City. A strong wind was blowing, forcing me inside any longer, leaving me to walk. At first, it was only a light drizzle, but a short distance later the rain intensified abruptly. It came as no shock. I paused beside a tent, clapping my hands to generate a little heat. A young boy had positioned himself selling homemade cookies. We shared brief remarks during my pause, although he appeared disengaged. I observed the cookies were loosely wrapped in plastic, dampened from the drizzle, and I pondered if he’d manage to sell them all before the night ended. The cold seeped into everything.

A Trek Through a City of Tents

While traversing al-Wehda Street in Gaza City, tents lined both sides of the road. There were no voices from inside them, merely the din of rain pouring down and the whistle of the wind. Rushing forward, attempting to avoid the rain, I activated my mobile phone's torch to illuminate the path. My thoughts kept returning to those taking refuge within: What occupies them now? What is their state of mind? How do they feel? A severe chill gripped the air. I pictured children curled under wet blankets, parents shifting constantly to keep them warm.

When I opened the door to my apartment, the cold metal served as a subtle yet haunting reminder of the suffering faced across Gaza in these severe cold season. I stepped inside my apartment and was overwhelmed by the guilt of having a roof when countless others faced exposure to the storm.

The Midnight Hour Worsens

In the middle of the night, the storm intensified. Outside, plastic sheeting on broken panes whipped and strained, while corrugated metal broke away and fell with a clatter. Cutting through the chaos came the piercing, fearful cries of children, piercing the darkness. I felt utterly powerless.

During recent days, the rain has been relentless. Cold, heavy, and driven by strong winds, it has flooded makeshift homes, swamped refugee areas and turned bare earth into mud. In other places, this might be called “bad weather”. In Gaza, it is experienced amidst exposure and abandonment.

Al-Arba’iniya

Locals call this time of year as al-Arba’iniya; the fourty most severe days of winter, starting from late December and lasting until the end of January. It is the true beginning of winter, the moment when the season shows its true power. Ordinarily, it is faced with preparation and shelter. This year, Gaza has neither. The cold bites through homes, streets are deserted and people merely survive.

But the danger of winter is now very real. 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 are still unaccounted for. Such collapses are not new attacks, but the outcome of homes damaged from months of bombardment and finally undone by winter rain. Not long ago, an eight-month-old baby girl in Khan Younis succumbed to exposure to the cold.

A Life in Tents

Observing the camp nearest my home, I witnessed the impact up close. Inadequate coverings buckled beneath 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 came to claiming life and health for hundreds of thousands living in tents and overcrowded shelters.

A great number of these residents have already been displaced, many repeatedly. Homes are gone. Neighbourhoods leveled. Winter has come to Gaza, but defense against it has not. It has come devoid of safe refuge, without electricity, lacking heat.

Students in the Storm

Being an educator in Gaza, this weather is a heavy burden. My students are not distant names; they are young people I speak to; bright, resilient, but profoundly exhausted. Most attend online classes from tents; others from cramped quarters where solitude is unattainable and connectivity unreliable. Many of my students have already experienced bereavement. Most have seen their houses destroyed. Yet they continue their education. 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—transform into moral negotiations, dictated every moment by concern for students’ safety, warmth and ability to find refuge.

When the storm rages, I cannot help but wonder about them. Do they have dryness? Do they feel any warmth? Did the wind tear through their shelter during the night? For those residing in apartments, or what remains of them, there is a lack of heat. With electricity mostly absent and fuel scarce, warmth comes mainly from donning extra clothing and using any remaining covers. Nonetheless, cold nights are intolerable. How then those living in tents?

Aid and Abandonment

Reports indicate that more than a million people in Gaza exist in makeshift accommodations. Aid supplies, including thermal blankets, have been far from enough. During the recent storm, aid organizations reported delivering plastic sheets, tents and mattresses to numerous households. In reality, however, this assistance was often perceived as inconsistent and lacking, limited to band-aid measures that did little against prolonged exposure to cold, wind and rain. Shelters fail. Respiratory illnesses, hypothermia, and infections linked to damp conditions are on the upswing.

This goes beyond an unforeseen disaster. Winter is an annual event. People in Gaza understand this failure not as bad luck, but as abandonment. People speak of how necessary items are restricted or delayed, while attempts to fix broken houses are repeatedly obstructed. Local initiatives have tried to improvise, to provide coverings, yet they continue to be hampered by bureaucratic barriers. The failure is political and humanitarian. Solutions exist, but are withheld.

A Preventable Suffering

The factor that intensifies this hardship especially agonizing is how unnecessary it should be. No individual ought to study, raise children, or fight illness standing ankle-deep in cold water inside a tent. It is wrong for a pupil to worry about the rain destroying their final textbook. Rain reveals just how vulnerable survival is. It challenges health worn down by pressure, weariness, and sorrow.

This year's chill aligns with the Christmas season that, for millions, symbolises warmth, refuge and care for the disadvantaged. In Palestine, that {symbolism