The clock read around 8:30 PM on a weekday evening when I made my way home in Gaza City. The wind howled, forcing me inside any longer, so walking was my only option. At first, it was just a gentle sprinkle, but following a brief walk the rain suddenly grew heavier. It came as no shock. I took shelter by a tent, rubbing my palms together to fight off the chill. A young boy had positioned himself selling baked goods. We spoke briefly during my pause, but his attention was elsewhere. I saw the cookies were hastily covered 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.
As I walked along al-Wehda Street in Gaza City, canvas structures flanked both sides of the road. There were no voices from inside them, only the sound of falling water and the moan of the wind. Quickening my pace, seeking escape from the rain, I activated my mobile phone's torch to see the road ahead. My mind continually drifted to those taking refuge within: How are they passing the time now? What thoughts fill their minds? How do they feel? It was bitterly cold. I envisioned children huddled under soaked bedding, parents moving restlessly to keep them warm.
Upon opening the door to my apartment, the freezing handle served as a subtle yet haunting reminder of the suffering faced across Gaza in these severe cold season. I stepped inside my apartment and couldn't shake the guilt of having a roof when countless others faced exposure to the storm.
In the middle of the night, the storm reached its peak. Outside, plastic sheeting on broken panes whipped and strained, while corrugated metal tore loose and crashed to the ground. Overriding the noise came the sharp, panicked screams of children, shattering the darkness. I felt completely helpless.
During recent days, the rain has been incessant. Freezing, pouring, and carried by strong winds, it has soaked tents, flooded makeshift camps and turned the soil into mud. Elsewhere, this might be called “bad weather”. In Gaza, it is lived with exposure and abandonment.
Residents refer to this time of year as al-Arba’iniya; the most bitter forty days of winter, beginning in late December and continuing through the end of January. It is the real onset of winter, the moment when the season unleashes its intensity. Typically, it is faced with preparation and shelter. Now, Gaza has none of these. The frost seeps through homes, streets are vacant and people simply endure.
But the threat posed by the cold is no longer abstract. On the Sunday morning before Christmas, rescue operations 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 remain missing. These structural failures are not new attacks, but the consequence of homes compromised after months of bombardment and ultimately defeated by winter rain. Not long ago, an eight-month-old baby girl in Khan Younis died of exposure to the cold.
Passing by the camp nearest my home, I witnessed the impact up close. Flimsy tarpaulins strained under the weight of water, mattresses bobbed in water and clothes remained wet, never fully drying. Each step reinforced how precarious these dwellings 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 displaced, many several times over. Homes are gone. Neighbourhoods razed. Winter has come to Gaza, but shelter from its fury has not. It has come devoid of safe refuge, without electricity, devoid of warmth.
As a university lecturer in Gaza, this weather weighs heavily on me. My students are not figures in a report; they are faces I recognize; intelligent, determined, but deeply weary. Most attend online classes from tents; others from packed rooms where privacy is impossible and connectivity unreliable. Many of my students have already lost family members. Most have seen their houses destroyed. Yet they continue their education. Their perseverance is astounding, but it should not be required in this way.
In Gaza, what would typically constitute routine academic practices—assignments, deadlines—become ethical dilemmas, dictated every moment by anxiety over students’ well-being, comfort and proximity to protection.
When the storm rages, I am constantly preoccupied about them. Do they have dryness? Is there heat? Could the storm have shredded through their shelter while they were trying to sleep? For those still living in apartments, or damaged structures, there is an absence of warmth. With electricity mostly absent and fuel scarce, warmth comes mostly via bundling up and using whatever blankets are left. Even so, cold nights are excruciating. What, then those living in tents?
Reports indicate that over a million people in Gaza reside in temporary housing. Relief items, including insulated tents, have been insufficient. During the recent storm, aid organizations reported providing plastic sheets, tents and mattresses to numerous households. In reality, however, this assistance was frequently felt to be uneven and inadequate, limited to temporary solutions that were largely ineffective against extended hardship to cold, wind and rain. Tents collapse. Sicknesses, hypothermia, and infections linked to damp conditions are rising.
This cannot be described as an unforeseen disaster. Winter arrives cyclically. People in Gaza interpret this shortcoming not as bad luck, but as being forsaken. People speak of how necessary items are blocked or slowed, while attempts to reinforce weakened structures are frequently blocked. Community efforts have tried to make do, to hand out tarps, yet they are still constrained by what is allowed to enter. The failure is political and humanitarian. Remedies are known, but are withheld.
What makes this suffering especially agonizing is how preventable it is. No individual ought to study, raise children, or fight illness standing knee-high in cold water inside a tent. No student should fear the rain damaging their precious phone. Rain lays bare just how fragile life has become. It strains physiques worn down by pressure, weariness, and sorrow.
This winter coincides with the Christmas season that, for millions, epitomizes warmth, refuge and care for the neediest. In Palestine, that {symbolism
A passionate textile artist and community organizer who loves inspiring others through creative sewing projects.
