During a Raging Gale, The Panicked Screams of Children in Tents Outside Echoed. This Marks Christmas in Gaza

It was approximately 8:30 PM on a weekday evening when I made my way home in Gaza City. A strong wind was blowing, making it impossible to remain any longer, so I had to walk. Initially, it was just a gentle sprinkle, but after about 200 metres the rain suddenly grew heavier. It came as no shock. I paused beside a tent, trying to warm my hands to draw some warmth. A young boy was sitting outside selling baked goods. We exchanged a few words during my pause, but his attention was elsewhere. I observed the cookies were hastily covered in plastic, moist 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 Place of Tents

As I walked along al-Wehda Street in Gaza City, makeshift shelters crowded both sides of the road. An eerie silence replaced voices from inside them, just the noise of rain pouring down and the moan of the wind. As I hurried on, seeking escape from the rain, I switched on my mobile phone's torch to illuminate the path. I couldn't stop thinking to those huddled within: What are they doing now? What are they thinking? How do they feel? It was bitterly cold. I imagined children huddled under damp covers, parents adjusting repeatedly to keep them warm.

When I opened the door to my apartment, the icy doorknob served as a subtle yet haunting reminder of the hardships endured across Gaza in these brutal winter climate. I stepped inside my apartment and felt consumed by the guilt of possessing shelter when so many were exposed to the storm.

The Darkness Worsens

In the middle of the night, the storm grew stronger. Outside, tarps on broken panes whipped and strained, while corrugated metal broke away and slammed down. Overriding the noise came the piercing, fearful cries of children, cutting through the darkness. I felt completely helpless.

Over the past two weeks, the rain has been relentless. Freezing, pouring, and carried by strong winds, it has soaked tents, inundated temporary settlements and turned bare earth into mud. Elsewhere, this might be called “inclement weather”. In Gaza, it is experienced amidst exposure and abandonment.

Al-Arba’iniya

Residents refer to this time of year as al-Arba’iniya; the 40 coldest and harshest days of winter, commencing in late December and lasting until the end of January. It is the real onset of winter, the moment when the season reveals its full force. Normally, it is weathered through preparation and shelter. This year, Gaza has none of these. The cold bites through homes, streets are vacant and people simply endure.

But the peril of the season is far from theoretical. Early on the Sunday before Christmas, civil defense teams found the victims 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 are still unaccounted for. Such collapses are not the result of fresh strikes, but the result of homes damaged from months of bombardment and succumbing to winter rain. Earlier this month, a young child in Khan Younis died of exposure to the cold.

A Life in Tents

Observing the camp nearest my home, I observed the results up close. Flimsy tarpaulins sagged under the weight of water, mattresses were adrift and clothes hung damply, incapable of drying. Each step reminded me how precarious these dwellings are and how close the rain and cold came to claiming life and health for countless individuals living in tents and cramped refuges.

Most of these people have already been displaced, many several times over. Homes are lost. Neighbourhoods razed. Winter has come to Gaza, but shelter from its fury has not. It has come devoid of safe refuge, with no power, devoid of warmth.

Students in the Storm

As a university lecturer in Gaza, this weather weighs heavily on me. My students are not figures in a report; they are young people I speak to; intelligent, determined, but profoundly exhausted. Most join virtual lessons from tents; others from packed rooms where personal space doesn't exist and connectivity sporadic. Countless learners have already suffered personal loss. Most have seen their houses destroyed. Yet they persist in learning. Their perseverance is astounding, but it should not be required in this way.

In Gaza, what would usually be routine academic practices—projects, due dates—become moral negotiations, shaped each day by anxiety over students’ security, heat and ability to find refuge.

During nights like these, I am constantly preoccupied about them. Are they dry? Is there heat? Has the gale ripped through their shelter during the night? For those remaining in apartments, or damaged structures, there is a lack of heat. With electricity scarce and fuel scarce, warmth comes mainly from wearing multiple layers and using whatever blankets are left. Nonetheless, cold nights are excruciating. How then those living in tents?

The Humanitarian Shortfall

Reports indicate that more than a million people in Gaza live in shelters. Aid supplies, including weatherproof shelters, 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 widely experienced as inconsistent and lacking, limited to band-aid measures that did little against extended hardship to cold, wind and rain. Tents collapse. Sicknesses, hypothermia, and infections caused by damp conditions are on the upswing.

This goes beyond an surprise calamity. Winter is an annual event. People in Gaza understand this failure not as fate, but as neglect. People speak of how critical supplies are hindered or postponed, while attempts to reinforce weakened structures are frequently blocked. Grassroots projects have tried to make do, to distribute plastic sheeting, yet they are still constrained by what is allowed to enter. The culpability lies in political and humanitarian. Solutions exist, but are prevented from arriving.

A Preventable Suffering

The factor that intensifies this hardship especially agonizing is how preventable it is. It is unconscionable to study, raise children, or fight illness standing surrounded by cold water inside a tent. No learner should dread the rain destroying their final textbook. Rain exposes just how precarious existence is. It strains physiques worn down by pressure, weariness, and sorrow.

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