I woke up to a sharp cold that seeped into my bones and drops of water falling onto my face. The fabric roof of the tent that sheltered me in southern Gaza was being pelted with rain. I rushed outside to check whether the tent would flood again like it did last November. Winter is coming.
After two years of war, the people of Gaza woke up on October 9, 2025, to the sound of silence—a ceasefire had finally been declared. A strange feeling, not quite joy, spread through the camp in al-Mawasi, where I have stayed since July 2024. We thought the ceasefire would finally bring an end to our fear, and allow us to return to more stable shelters where we could be protected from the impending cold, rain, and floods of winter. But in reality, little has changed. Israel violates the ceasefire daily and has continued bombing Gaza.
Though the planes have not dropped bombs on our camp since the ceasefire, we have no homes to return to, and no open cities in which we can settle. My home city, Rafah, remains closed to us, but it is now unrecognizable—rubble and destruction are everywhere. When I visited Rafah earlier this year, I didn’t recognize the streets of my neighborhood, and I couldn’t find my home among the rubble.
What hurt the most was knowing that even after the ceasefire, we would soon face another harsh winter in the same conditions as years past. The bombing has paused at the camp where I’m staying, but the suffering has not. As December approaches, we remain in the same tents we’ve been living in for more than a year, bracing for the cold, floods, and hardships that Gaza’s winter brings. During the peak of winter, which usually lasts from October to March, people in Gaza face bitter cold temperatures, especially at night, along with strong winds and heavy rains and flooding. Israel’s refusal to allow aid into the region has left many people living without warm clothing or blankets in temporary shelters that weren’t built to withstand the rain and wind.
Last year was my first winter living in a tent. It was brutal. Even something as simple as washing your face in the winter becomes a struggle due to the lack of electricity, which has been unavailable for two years. There were not enough blankets, and if it rained hard enough, the tent would flood. Strong winds could even break the tent. As I reflect on last winter, I worry about the months ahead of us.
My family was forced to flee our home in May 2024, when the Israeli military launched a ground invasion of Rafah, Gaza’s southernmost city that borders Egypt. We bought a tent for $550 and set it up on barren land in the coastal strip of al-Mawasi, which is in the city of Khan Yunis in southern Gaza. Our tent was near the sea, surrounded by dozens of other tents. Al-Mawasi, which is considered a humanitarian zone, stretches across vast lands—some green for farming, others barren but still inhabited due to lack of space elsewhere. The occupation concentrated large numbers of people into small areas to carry out military operations.
I had only heard about the harsh life in tents during my time volunteering at United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees, or UNRWA, shelters. When we settled with our scattered belongings in the al-Mawasi camp, it felt like I was living a nightmare, as if I were the first person on this planet forced to live in a tent.
That first night, my family slept inside the tent, while I stayed outside to guard our belongings. I couldn’t sleep, as my mind raced with one question: Would we ever again know the peace of a quiet home, or would we live in a tent from now on?
I found it nearly impossible to sleep in the tent. From the first sunlight that pierced through the fabric in the early morning, the tent became too hot, making it unbearable to stay inside from noon until sunset. My brother Muhammad and I slept outside.
By late October 2024, the weather had turned harsh, and the sun seemed unwilling to rise. To make matters worse, because there is no electricity in Gaza, we relied (and still do) on solar panels to charge our phones and power essential devices. On these cloudy days, finding somewhere to charge is a struggle.
Every day, we tried to get used to life in the tent without these basic conditions, but every day, we failed. I felt so isolated from the world, from normalcy and logic. Every day, I waited for the ground operation in Rafah to end. I longed to return, to see my neighborhood and home, and to sleep in my bed again—my back ached from sleeping on the sand.
Like everyone else sheltering in al-Mawasi, we feared the approaching winter, which was sure to be difficult to endure while living in a tent, which provides minimal protection from the cold, rain, and wind. I had no idea that the harsh winter ahead of us would be even more difficult than the trauma of losing my home in Rafah, testing us in ways I could not yet imagine.
On October 27, 2024, I had an online exam at the Islamic University of Gaza, which had recently resumed classes. Because Israeli bombing destroyed my university, and Gaza’s infrastructure as a whole, my studies had been disrupted for more than a year. In July, classes resumed online, despite the severe difficulties to access Internet and electricity in Gaza. That day was my first online exam, and I was determined to take it.
I walked for more than an hour from our tent to a cafe that I knew had electricity and Internet. On the way, it started pouring rain, and I saw a tent flood along the path. The strong winds reminded me that our own tent might not survive the storm, risking all of the belongings we had left. I struggled internally—should I return to the tent to check on my family, or continue to the cafe to take my exam? My phone had no battery, so I decided to keep walking, with the hope that I could charge it soon to call my mother. At the cafe, I tried all my family’s numbers, but no one picked up. I decided to take the exam quickly and return to the tent. Half an hour later, I submitted my work without reviewing and ran back.
Back at our camp, some tents had collapsed from the rain, the wooden structures holding them up broken by the strong sea winds. Our tent was still standing but water had seeped inside, soaking some of our clothes and bedding. My mother had quickly redirected the water and managed to protect most of our belongings just in time.
In the following months, the cold intensified. Living in a tent during winter meant sleeping while our bones ached from the intense cold at night. Unfortunately, this cold did not spare the innocent: At least seven infants died from the severe cold, while more than 1.9 million people, including myself, lived displaced in insufficient conditions, unable to protect themselves from the harsh environment. Even the simplest daily tasks, such as accessing the Internet or charging a phone, were difficult. When we wanted to wash our hands or take a shower, we felt our bodies suffer even more amid the biting cold and lack of warm water, clothes, and blankets.
Every day, we waited for the war to end, hoping we could return to our homes—or at least for winter to be over.
Nearly a year has passed since my family survived our first winter in the tents, yet nothing has improved. Our life is on hold. The winter of the war era has ended and the winter of the ceasefire era has begun. Even with the ceasefire, our reality has hardly changed—cold, floods, and uncertainty await us once again. Our worn-out tents carry new patches instead of the old holes, but we will face the same hardships, as if time had brought us back to the beginning.
Despite the announcement of a ceasefire, our lives have not returned to normal. Tents are still our shelter, and the cold and daily restrictions continue to test our patience and resilience. The suffering hasn’t stopped, nor has an end been written for it, yet we live and try to survive, holding on to hope despite the darkness. Continuing to dream of stability and peace is what proves that we are still here, and that our voices cannot be forgotten.