During a Fierce Tempest, The Panicked Screams of Children in Tents Outside Echoed. This is Christmas in Gaza

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. Initially, it was merely a soft rain, but after about 200 metres the rain became a downpour. This was expected. I paused beside a tent, trying to warm my hands to generate a little heat. A young boy had positioned himself selling sweet treats. We shared brief remarks while I stood there, but his attention was elsewhere. I noticed the cookies were poorly packaged in plastic, moist from the drizzle, and I pondered if he’d manage to sell them all before the night ended. The freezing temperature invaded every space.

A Journey Through a Landscape of Tents

As I walked along al-Wehda Street in Gaza City, makeshift shelters crowded both sides of the road. No sounds of conversation came from inside them, only the sound of torrential rain and the moan of the wind. Quickening my pace, seeking escape from the rain, I switched on my mobile phone's torch to see the road ahead. My mind continually drifted to those sheltering inside: How are they passing the time now? What are they thinking? What emotions do they hold? The cold was piercing. I pictured children huddled under damp covers, parents shifting constantly 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 severe cold season. I entered my apartment and was overwhelmed by the guilt of having a roof when a multitude remained unprotected to the storm.

The Night Worsens

In the middle of the night, the storm grew stronger. Outside, makeshift covers on shattered windows whipped and strained, while corrugated metal ripped free and fell with a clatter. Cutting through the chaos came the desperate, terrified shouts of children, shattering the darkness. I felt totally incapable.

For the last fortnight, the rain has been incessant. Cold, heavy, and driven by strong winds, it has flooded makeshift homes, inundated temporary settlements and turned open ground into mud. Elsewhere, this might be called “bad weather”. In Gaza, it is endured in a state of exposure and abandonment.

The Cruelest Season

Palestinians know this time of year as al-Arba’iniya; the fourty most severe 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 reveals its full force. Ordinarily, it is endured with preparation and shelter. Currently, Gaza has no such defenses. The cold bites through homes, streets are vacant and people simply endure.

But the threat posed by the cold is far from theoretical. In the early hours of Sunday before Christmas, rescue operations retrieved the remains of two children after the roof of a bombarded structure collapsed in northern Gaza, freeing five additional individuals, including a child and two women. Two people have not been found. These structural failures are not caused by ongoing hostilities, but the consequence of homes damaged from months of bombardment and ultimately defeated by winter rain. Not long ago, an infant in Khan Younis died of exposure to the cold.

A Life in Tents

Passing by the camp nearest my home, I observed the results up close. Thin plastic sheets sagged under the weight of water, mattresses were adrift and clothes remained wet, incapable of drying. Each step reinforced how fragile these shelters were and how close the rain and cold came to taking life and health for countless individuals living in tents and cramped refuges.

A great number of these residents have already been uprooted, many repeatedly. Homes are gone. Neighbourhoods leveled. Winter has arrived in Gaza, but shelter from its fury has not. It has come lacking adequate housing, with no power, lacking heat.

A Teacher's Anguish

In my role as a professor 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 overcrowded shelters where solitude is unattainable and connectivity unreliable. A significant number of pupils have already suffered personal loss. Most have been rendered homeless. Yet they persist in learning. Their perseverance is astounding, but it should not be required in this way.

In Gaza, what would typically constitute routine academic practices—tasks, schedules—transform into questions of conscience, influenced daily by concern for students’ well-being, comfort and proximity to protection.

On evenings such as this, I am constantly preoccupied about them. Do they have dryness? Are they warm? Did the wind tear through their shelter as they attempted to rest? For those remaining in apartments, or what remains of them, there is no heating. With electricity scarce and fuel scarce, warmth comes mostly via donning extra clothing and using any remaining covers. Despite this, cold nights are intolerable. What about those living in tents?

Aid and Abandonment

Agencies state that more than a million people in Gaza live in shelters. Humanitarian assistance, including insulated tents, have been insufficient. During the recent storm, relief groups reported distributing plastic sheets, tents and mattresses to a multitude of people. For those affected, however, this assistance was frequently felt to be inconsistent and lacking, limited to short-term fixes that offered scant protection against extended hardship to cold, wind and rain. Structures give way. Sicknesses, hypothermia, and infections associated with damp conditions are rising.

This goes beyond an surprise calamity. Winter arrives cyclically. People in Gaza view this crisis not as fate, but as neglect. People speak of how critical supplies are blocked or slowed, while attempts to fix broken houses are consistently hampered. Local initiatives have tried to improvise, to provide coverings, yet they are still constrained by what is allowed to enter. The culpability lies in political and humanitarian. Solutions exist, but are withheld.

A Preventable Suffering

The factor that intensifies this hardship especially painful is how unnecessary it should be. No individual ought to study, raise children, or battle sickness 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 exposes just how fragile life has become. It strains physiques worn down by pressure, weariness, and sorrow.

This winter aligns with the Christmas season that, for millions, represents warmth, refuge and care for the neediest. In Palestine, that {symbolism