🔗 Share this article

The time was around 8:30 PM on a Thursday when I returned home in Gaza City. Gusts of wind blew, forcing me inside any longer, so walking was my only option. At first, it was only a light drizzle, but a short distance later the rain suddenly grew heavier. That wasn’t surprising. I paused beside a tent, trying to warm my hands to generate a little heat. A young boy sat nearby selling baked goods. We shared brief remarks during my pause, although he appeared disengaged. I observed the cookies were poorly packaged in plastic, moist from the drizzle, and I wondered if he’d find buyers before the night ended. A deep chill permeated the air.

A Journey Through a City of Tents

While traversing al-Wehda Street in Gaza City, canvas structures flanked both sides of the road. No sounds of conversation came 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 light my way. My thoughts kept returning to those taking refuge within: What are they doing now? What are they thinking? How do they feel? It was bitterly cold. I pictured children curled under soaked bedding, parents shifting constantly to keep them warm.

As I unlocked the door to my apartment, the icy doorknob served as a quiet but powerful reminder of the suffering faced across Gaza in these brutal winter climate. I entered my apartment and was overwhelmed by the guilt of possessing shelter when a multitude remained unprotected to the storm.

The Night Intensifies

In the middle of the night, the storm intensified. Outside, tarps on damaged glass sagged and flapped violently, while tin roofing broke away and slammed down. Cutting through the chaos came the piercing, fearful cries of children, cutting through the darkness. I felt completely helpless.

During recent days, the rain has been relentless. Cold, heavy, and driven by strong winds, it has drenched shelters, flooded makeshift camps and turned the soil into mud. Elsewhere, 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 persisting to the end of January. It is the real onset of winter, the moment when the season reveals its full force. Normally, it is faced with preparation and shelter. This year, Gaza has neither. The chill penetrates through homes, streets are vacant and people just persevere.

But the peril of the season is no longer abstract. In the early hours of Sunday before Christmas, civil defense teams recovered the bodies of two children after the roof of a shelled home collapsed in northern Gaza, saving five more people, including a child and two women. Two people have not been found. Such collapses are not caused by ongoing hostilities, but the result of homes compromised after months of bombardment and succumbing to winter rain. Earlier this month, an eight-month-old baby girl in Khan Younis passed away from exposure to the cold.

Fragile Shelters

Walking past the camp nearest my home, I observed the results up close. Thin plastic sheets strained under the weight of water, mattresses bobbed in water and clothes were perpetually moist, incapable of drying. Each step reinforced how fragile these shelters were and how close the rain and cold came to claiming life and health for a vast population living in tents and overcrowded shelters.

A great number of these residents have already been forced from their homes, many several times over. Homes are gone. Neighbourhoods razed. Winter has arrived in Gaza, but defense against it has not. It has come devoid of safe refuge, with no power, devoid of warmth.

A Teacher's Anguish

In my role as a professor in Gaza, this weather weighs heavily on me. My students are not mere statistics; they are faces I recognize; smart, persistent, but extremely fatigued. Most join virtual lessons from tents; others from packed rooms where solitude is unattainable and connectivity intermittent. Countless learners have already lost family members. Most have seen their houses destroyed. Yet they persist in learning. Their fortitude is remarkable, but it should not be required in this way.

In Gaza, what would normally count as routine academic practices—tasks, schedules—transform into questions of conscience, dictated every moment by anxiety over students’ security, heat and ability to find refuge.

On evenings such as this, I cannot help but wonder about them. Is their shelter holding? Do they feel any warmth? Has the gale ripped through their shelter while they were trying to sleep? For those remaining in apartments, or the shells that are left, there is a lack of heat. With electricity mostly absent and fuel rare, warmth comes mostly via donning extra clothing and using any remaining covers. Nonetheless, cold nights are unbearable. What about those living in tents?

Political Failure

Reports indicate that more than a million people in Gaza reside in temporary housing. Relief items, including weatherproof shelters, have been far from enough. When the cyclone hit, humanitarian partners reported distributing coverings, shelters and sleeping materials to a multitude of people. For those affected, however, this assistance was often perceived as patchy and insufficient, limited to band-aid measures that did little against prolonged exposure to cold, wind and rain. Structures give way. Chest infections, hypothermia, and infections caused by damp conditions are increasing.

This is not an unforeseen disaster. Winter comes every year. People in Gaza interpret this shortcoming not as bad luck, but as being forsaken. People speak of how essential materials are hindered or postponed, while attempts to reinforce weakened structures are repeatedly obstructed. Community efforts have tried to make do, to distribute plastic sheeting, yet they are still constrained by restrictions on imports. The failure is political and humanitarian. Remedies are known, but are prevented from arriving.

An Unnecessary Pain

What makes this suffering especially agonizing is how preventable it is. It is unconscionable to study, raise children, or battle sickness standing ankle-deep in cold water inside a tent. No student should fear the rain ruining their last notebook. Rain reveals just how precarious existence is. It strains physiques worn down by anxiety, fatigue, and loss.

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