During a Raging Tempest, The Cries of Children in Tents Pierced the Night. This Marks Christmas in Gaza

The clock read approximately 8:30 PM on a weekday evening when I returned 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 a short distance later the rain became a downpour. That wasn’t surprising. I took shelter by a tent, rubbing my palms together to draw some warmth. A young boy had positioned himself selling sweet treats. We shared brief remarks while I stood there, though he didn’t seem interested. I saw the cookies were poorly packaged in plastic, moist from the drizzle, and I pondered if he’d find buyers before the night ended. The cold seeped into everything.

A Walk Through a City of Tents

Walking down al-Wehda Street in Gaza City, makeshift shelters crowded both sides of the road. There were no voices from inside them, only the sound of torrential rain and the whistle of the wind. Rushing forward, seeking escape from the rain, I activated my mobile phone's torch to illuminate the path. I couldn't stop thinking to those taking refuge within: What occupies them now? What thoughts fill their minds? What are they experiencing? The cold was piercing. I envisioned children curled under soaked bedding, parents shifting constantly to keep them warm.

When I opened the door to my apartment, the icy doorknob served as a quiet but powerful reminder of the suffering faced across Gaza in these severe cold season. I walked into my apartment and felt consumed by the guilt of having a roof when a multitude remained unprotected to the storm.

The Night Intensifies

As midnight passed, the storm reached its peak. Outside, tarps on damaged glass whipped and strained, while metal sheets ripped free and fell with a clatter. Overriding the noise came the piercing, fearful cries of children, piercing the darkness. I felt utterly powerless.

Over the past two weeks, the rain has been unending. Cold, heavy, and driven by strong winds, it has soaked tents, flooded makeshift camps and turned the soil into mud. Elsewhere, 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 true beginning of winter, the moment when the season unleashes its intensity. Ordinarily, it is faced with preparation and shelter. Now, Gaza has neither. The frost seeps through homes, streets are vacant and people merely survive.

But the threat posed by the cold 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, freeing five additional individuals, including a child and two women. Two people have not been found. Such collapses are not new attacks, but the outcome of homes compromised after months of bombardment and finally undone by winter rain. Earlier this month, an eight-month-old baby girl 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 buckled beneath the weight of water, mattresses were adrift and clothes hung damply, never fully drying. Each step highlighted how vulnerable these tents are and how close the rain and cold came to taking life and health for a vast population living in tents and cramped refuges.

Most of these people have already been displaced, many several times over. Homes are gone. Neighbourhoods leveled. Winter has come to Gaza, but protection from it has not. It has come devoid of safe refuge, with no power, devoid of warmth.

Students in the Storm

In my role as a professor in Gaza, this weather causes deep concern. My students are not distant names; they are young people I speak to; intelligent, determined, but profoundly exhausted. Most participate in digital sessions from tents; others from cramped quarters where solitude is unattainable and connectivity unreliable. Many of my students have already lost family members. Most have lost their homes. Yet they persist in learning. Their fortitude is remarkable, but it should not be required in this way.

In Gaza, what would normally count as routine academic practices—projects, due dates—transform into ethical dilemmas, influenced daily by concern for students’ security, heat and proximity to protection.

During nights like these, I am constantly preoccupied about them. Do they have dryness? Do they feel any warmth? Has the gale ripped through their shelter during the night? For those residing in apartments, or what remains of them, there is a lack of heat. With electricity scarce and fuel scarce, warmth comes mainly from bundling up and using the few bedding items available. Nonetheless, cold nights are intolerable. What, then those living in tents?

Aid and Abandonment

Figures show that over a million people in Gaza exist in makeshift accommodations. Humanitarian assistance, including thermal blankets, have been inadequate. When the cyclone hit, aid organizations reported providing plastic sheets, tents and mattresses to numerous households. In reality, however, this assistance was widely experienced as patchy and insufficient, limited to short-term fixes that were largely ineffective against prolonged exposure to cold, wind and rain. Tents collapse. Chest infections, hypothermia, and infections linked to damp conditions are increasing.

This is not an surprise calamity. Winter arrives cyclically. People in Gaza understand this failure not as misfortune, but as neglect. People speak of how essential materials are blocked or slowed, while attempts to fix broken houses are frequently blocked. Local initiatives have tried to find solutions, to distribute plastic sheeting, yet they are still constrained by what is allowed to enter. The culpability lies in political and humanitarian. Answers are available, but are prevented from arriving.

An Unnecessary Pain

What makes this suffering especially painful is how avoidable it could have been. It is unconscionable 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 exposes just how precarious existence is. It tests bodies worn down by anxiety, fatigue, and loss.

This year's chill coincides with the Christmas season that, for millions, represents warmth, refuge and care for the disadvantaged. In Palestine, that {symbolism