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

The time was around 8:30 PM on a Thursday when I headed back home in Gaza City. Gusts of wind blew, and I couldn’t stay out any longer, so I had to walk. In the beginning, it was only a light drizzle, but a short distance later the rain became a downpour. It came as no shock. I took shelter by a tent, trying to warm my hands to fight off the chill. A young boy had positioned himself selling baked goods. We exchanged a few words as I waited, though he didn’t seem interested. I observed the cookies were loosely wrapped in plastic, dampened from the drizzle, and I questioned if he’d manage to sell them all before the night ended. The freezing temperature invaded every space.

A Journey Through a City of Tents

As I walked along al-Wehda Street in Gaza City, tents lined both sides of the road. There were no voices from inside them, just the noise of falling water and the moan of the wind. Quickening my pace, attempting to avoid the rain, I activated my mobile phone's torch to see the road ahead. I couldn't stop thinking to those sheltering inside: What are they doing now? What thoughts fill their minds? What are they experiencing? The cold was piercing. I envisioned children huddled under damp covers, parents adjusting repeatedly to keep them warm.

When I opened the door to my apartment, the cold metal served as a quiet but powerful 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 a multitude remained unprotected to the storm.

The Midnight Hour Escalates

During the darkest hours, the storm intensified. Outside, tarps on broken panes billowed and tore, while corrugated metal ripped free and crashed to the ground. Cutting through the chaos came the piercing, fearful cries of children, cutting through the darkness. I felt utterly powerless.

For the last fortnight, the rain has been incessant. Cold, heavy, and driven by strong winds, it has soaked tents, inundated temporary settlements and turned the soil into mud. In other places, this might be called “inclement weather”. In Gaza, it is endured in a state of exposure and abandonment.

Al-Arba’iniya

Palestinians know this time of year as al-Arba’iniya; the fourty most severe 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 reveals its full force. Typically, it is faced with preparation and shelter. This year, Gaza has no such defenses. The frost seeps through homes, streets are deserted and people just persevere.

But the danger of winter is far from theoretical. Early on the Sunday before Christmas, civil defense teams retrieved the remains of two children after the roof of a bombarded structure collapsed in northern Gaza, rescuing five others, including a child and two women. Two people remain missing. Such collapses are not the result of fresh strikes, but the outcome 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

Walking past the camp nearest my home, I saw the consequences up close. Flimsy tarpaulins strained under the weight of water, mattresses floated and clothes remained wet, incapable of drying. Each step highlighted how fragile these shelters were and how close the rain and cold came to claiming life and health for hundreds of thousands living in tents and packed sanctuaries.

Most of these people have already been displaced, many repeatedly. Homes are lost. Neighbourhoods leveled. Winter has arrived in Gaza, but shelter from its fury has not. It has come devoid of safe refuge, without electricity, lacking heat.

The Weight on Education

Being an educator in Gaza, this weather causes deep concern. My students are not distant names; they are young people I speak to; smart, persistent, but extremely fatigued. Most join virtual lessons from tents; others from overcrowded shelters where privacy is impossible and connectivity unreliable. Countless learners have already suffered personal loss. Most have seen their houses destroyed. Yet they still try to study. Their fortitude is remarkable, but it ought not be necessary in this way.

In Gaza, what would normally count as routine academic practices—assignments, deadlines—turn into questions of conscience, influenced daily by uncertainty about students’ security, heat and access to shelter.

During nights like these, I am constantly preoccupied about them. Are they dry? Do they feel any warmth? Has the gale ripped through their shelter during the night? For those still living in apartments, or damaged structures, there is an absence of warmth. With electricity scarce and fuel in short supply, warmth comes primarily through wearing multiple layers and using whatever blankets are left. Despite this, cold nights are intolerable. How then those living in tents?

Aid and Abandonment

Reports indicate that well over a million people in Gaza exist in makeshift accommodations. Relief items, including thermal blankets, have been inadequate. Amid the last tempest, humanitarian partners reported delivering tarpaulins, tents and bedding to thousands of families. On the ground, however, this assistance was widely experienced as uneven and inadequate, limited to band-aid measures that did little against prolonged exposure to cold, wind and rain. Structures give way. Respiratory illnesses, hypothermia, and infections associated with damp conditions are increasing.

This is not an surprise calamity. Winter is an annual event. People in Gaza interpret this shortcoming not as fate, but as being forsaken. People speak of how critical supplies are hindered or postponed, while attempts to fix broken houses are frequently blocked. Local initiatives have tried to make do, to hand out tarps, yet they remain limited by restrictions on imports. The root cause is political and humanitarian. Solutions exist, but are prevented from arriving.

A Preventable Suffering

What makes this suffering especially heartbreaking is how preventable it is. No one should have 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 damaging their precious phone. Rain reveals just how precarious existence is. It strains physiques worn down by stress, exhaustion, and grief.

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