During a Fierce Storm, I Could Hear. This Marks Christmas in Gaza

The clock read around 8:30 PM on a weekday evening when I returned home in Gaza City. A strong wind was blowing, and I couldn’t stay out any longer, so walking was my only option. At first, it was only a light drizzle, but after about 200 metres the rain became a downpour. It came as no shock. I stopped near a tent, trying to warm my hands to generate a little heat. A young boy was sitting outside selling homemade cookies. We shared brief remarks during my pause, but his attention was elsewhere. I noticed the cookies were hastily covered in plastic, already soggy from the drizzle, and I wondered if he’d manage to sell them all before the night ended. The cold seeped into everything.

A Walk Through a Place of Tents

While traversing al-Wehda Street in Gaza City, makeshift shelters crowded both sides of the road. An eerie silence replaced voices from inside them, only the sound of torrential rain and the moan of the wind. Quickening my pace, attempting to avoid the rain, I turned on my mobile phone's torch to light my way. I couldn't stop thinking to those taking refuge within: How are they passing the time now? What is their state of mind? How do they feel? A severe chill gripped the air. I imagined children nestled under wet blankets, parents shifting constantly 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 stepped inside my apartment and felt consumed by the guilt of possessing shelter when so many were exposed to the storm.

The Darkness Intensifies

As midnight passed, the storm grew stronger. Outside, tarps on shattered windows whipped and strained, while metal sheets broke away and fell with a clatter. Above it all came the sharp, panicked screams of children, shattering the darkness. I felt totally incapable.

During recent days, the rain has been relentless. Cold, heavy, and driven by strong winds, it has soaked tents, swamped refugee areas and turned the soil into mud. In other places, this might be called “poor conditions”. In Gaza, it is lived with exposure and abandonment.

The Harshest Days

Locals call this time of year as al-Arba’iniya; the 40 coldest and harshest days of winter, beginning in late December and lasting until the end of January. It is the definite start of winter, the moment when the season shows its true power. Ordinarily, it is endured with preparation and shelter. Now, Gaza has no such defenses. The cold bites through homes, streets are vacant and people merely survive.

But the threat posed by the cold is no longer abstract. In the early hours of Sunday before Christmas, civil defense teams found the victims of two children after the roof of a war-damaged building collapsed in northern Gaza, saving five more people, including a child and two women. Two people are still unaccounted for. Such collapses are not the result of fresh strikes, but the consequence of homes weakened by months of bombardment and ultimately defeated by winter rain. In recent days, a young child in Khan Younis succumbed to exposure to the cold.

A Life in Tents

Walking past the camp nearest my home, I saw the consequences up close. Thin plastic sheets sagged under the weight of water, mattresses were adrift and clothes hung damply, always damp. Each step highlighted how fragile these shelters were and how close the rain and cold threatened life and health for a vast population living in tents and cramped refuges.

Most of these people have already been uprooted, many several times over. Homes are destroyed. Neighbourhoods razed. Winter has come to Gaza, but shelter from its fury has not. It has come lacking adequate housing, without electricity, lacking heat.

The Weight on Education

As a university lecturer in Gaza, this weather causes deep concern. My students are not distant names; they are individuals I know; smart, persistent, but profoundly exhausted. Most participate in digital sessions from tents; others from overcrowded shelters where solitude is unattainable and connectivity sporadic. Countless learners have already suffered personal loss. Most have seen their houses destroyed. Yet they persist in learning. Their resilience is extraordinary, 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 uncertainty about students’ safety, warmth and ability to find refuge.

On evenings such as this, I am constantly preoccupied 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 the shells that are left, there is an absence of warmth. With electricity scarce and fuel in short supply, warmth comes primarily through bundling up and using whatever blankets are left. Even so, cold nights are intolerable. What, then those living in tents?

Political Failure

Reports indicate that over a million people in Gaza exist in makeshift accommodations. Aid supplies, including insulated tents, have been insufficient. During the recent storm, aid organizations reported delivering plastic sheets, tents and mattresses to thousands of families. On the ground, however, this assistance was frequently felt to be inconsistent and lacking, limited to band-aid measures that did little against prolonged exposure to cold, wind and rain. Tents collapse. Respiratory illnesses, hypothermia, and infections associated with damp conditions are rising.

This is not an unexpected catastrophe. Winter arrives cyclically. People in Gaza understand this failure not as misfortune, but as abandonment. People speak of how essential materials are blocked or slowed, while attempts to repair damaged homes are consistently hampered. Local initiatives have tried to make do, to provide coverings, yet they continue to be hampered by what is allowed to enter. The failure is political and humanitarian. Solutions exist, but are prevented from arriving.

A Preventable Suffering

The factor that intensifies this hardship especially agonizing is how unnecessary it should be. No one should have to study, raise children, or combat disease standing surrounded by cold water inside a tent. No student should fear the rain damaging their precious phone. Rain exposes just how vulnerable survival is. It tests bodies worn down by anxiety, fatigue, and loss.

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