The seasons change, but for those fighting for survival through wet winters and baking summers in Gaza’s tents, the suffering remains.

I stand before my tent watching the rain batter its tattered roof, listening to the wood groan under the pressure of the wind, trying for the thousandth time to convince myself that anything I do will protect the place where my family and I have been displaced for two years.

I write what I live through for the third consecutive winter: this winter with its suffocating weight, the same fear that steals sleep from our eyes, the cold that gnaws at children’s bodies, and the waiting that has become a fixed part of our days. I write knowing all too well how the occupation shrinks a homeland until it becomes a temporary tent, how rain turns into a threat, and how a person collapses when they no longer have the ability even to collapse.

For the third year in a row, Gaza is drowning in rainwater while the world offers sympathy from behind screens. Scenes of tents trembling under storms create a brief uproar then everything fades again. It is as if sorrow has become a substitute for action, a cure for cold, hunger, and fear.

But the truth is that the world’s tears do not dry a single tent, do not prevent a roof from collapsing, and do not save a child shivering under the rain.

What is happening in the winter of 2025 is not surprising. Gaza was not surprised by the rain, it was surprised once again by a world that witnesses the catastrophe every year as though it is happening for the first time. As though three seasons of flooding over the heads of the displaced were not enough for the world to understand what it means for more than half a million people to live without shelter.

Suffering untouched by time

This is the third winter since the Israeli genocide began in October 2023. Thousands of families have not entered a home in more than 800 days. They have touched no wall that protects them, no window that shuts in warmth, no bed that shields them from the cold. More than 83 per cent of the Strip has been destroyed, and around 1.9 million people are homeless.

The tents drowning today are the same ones that melted under the summer heat, the same ones that were mixed with the remains of the dead under the bombing, the same ones children tried to revive with their small drawings. The tent has not changed, nor has the policy that forced it; only the season has changed so the shapes of pain have varied, and continued.

The world was shocked by images of flooding just as it was previously shocked by images of demolished homes, families sleeping for days in the streets under cold and shelling, and children who lost limbs, parents, or their futures. But shock – no matter how often repeated – has produced no action. As though the astonishment is no longer at the scale of the tragedy, but at the fact that Palestinians remain alive despite everything done to them.

The natural outcome of any human catastrophe should have been urgent reconstruction, or at least providing temporary housing. But Gaza is still filled with tents, not buildings, with waiting instead of recovery.

A ceasefire that stopped nothing

A ceasefire agreement entered into effect, including detailed terms such as releasing Israeli captives alive and dead, allowing in relief materials and temporary shelters, and halting military operations. Yet all of this remained ink on paper, with no reflection on the ground.

Israel did not withdraw. It still controls more than 50 per cent of the Strip under what it calls the ‘yellow zone,’ preventing hundreds of thousands of Palestinians from even visiting the places where their homes once stood, ruins or not. Return is banned; civilians approaching their areas are turned back; rebuilding is impossible.

Aid and temporary shelters were also not allowed in as stipulated. And with continued military control, movement becomes nearly impossible, return a distant dream, and tents an inescapable fate. Genocide was shifted from the form of airstrikes to a slower, harsher form: leaving people exposed to the elements.

Tents are not shelter they are another stage of punishment

What does it mean for a person to live in a tent on the seashore?

A tent is not a home. It is a thin sheet of fabric separating a family from the world, but not from the rain, the wind, or the fear. By the sea, a tent becomes even more fragile: the wind flips it, the waves threaten it, and moisture seeps in every night.

Each time the rain begins, I stand before my tent trying to convince myself that I can protect it but the truth is that nothing can be done. Its wooden frame is rotten, worn by sun and rain, carried with us from Al-Mawasi to Rafah, then to Khan Younis, then back to Al-Mawasi again. It can no longer hold another nail or rope. As for the nylon, it has become brittle, leaking water and making noise all night under the fierce winds.

Mothers stay awake until dawn fearing the roof will collapse on their children. Men spend the night reinforcing the leaning poles. Children face rain and cold with frail bodies unable to resist.

Suffering is not a side effect – it is policy

When Israel prevents the entry of temporary shelters, it is not committing ‘humanitarian negligence.’ It is carrying out a clear policy: keeping Palestinians in a state of permanent suffering, chronic poverty, and daily struggle for life’s basics. The goal is neither military nor security related; the goal is controlling Gaza and making life unliveable for its people.

There is no humanitarian, legal, or military justification for banning the entry of thick tents, heating materials, wooden panels, or tools that help people survive a deadly winter. The only explanation is the desire to maintain pressure on the population, to make survival itself an impossible task.

The seasons change but the genocide does not stop

In the summer, heat kills people inside airless tents. In the winter, rain and cold kill them. And at all times, the siege kills through hunger, lack of medicine, and contaminated water. The seasons change, but the suffering remains tied to a single thread: stripping Palestinians of their most basic right to life.

The siege controls not only space but time as well: people’s days and nights, their seasons, the rhythm of their lives. And with each season, the genocide takes a new form yet remains the same in its essence.

Meanwhile, the international powers sponsoring the agreement remain silent. They see the tents collapsing, see children freezing, see people living in mud, yet they exert no pressure, impose nothing, hold no one accountable. As though the world’s role has become issuing statements of concern then stepping back.

The daily resistance of survival

Gazans do not wait for the seasons to adapt to them. They face each day with whatever they can: men gather wet wood, women search for a scrap of plastic to cover the tent’s entrance, children carry containers to empty water from inside. These small details are not heroic acts they are the instinct to survive.

And yet the biggest question remains suspended:

Until when? Until when will Palestinians be treated as though they are facing bad weather, not a policy of killing? Until when will rain be the only event the world allows itself to talk about? Until when will Gaza be left alone in the storm?

Gaza is not drowning because of winter alone, but because of the policies that left millions under tents, without shelter or protection. Rain alone does not create a catastrophe; catastrophe occurs when people live without a roof, without walls, without a door to shut, without a safe place to return to.

In the end, sorrow does not stop the flood. Gaza does not need more tears — it needs actions to stop the genocide that takes on a new form every season.

The views expressed in this article may or may not reflect those of Pearls and Irritations.