A Winter Without Shelter: Displaced Families in Gaza Confront the Cold With What Remains of Life

In Gaza, winter does not arrive carrying rain alone—it arrives carrying anxiety. Cold here is not measured by degrees on a thermometer, but by the number of sleepless nights that pass heavily, and by the number of small bodies struggling to survive a merciless frost.
With meteorological warnings of a severe cold wave and the possibility of frost formation, night turns into a daily test of survival—especially inside tents and destroyed homes sheltering thousands of displaced families.

Here, people do not ask about the weather forecast. They ask whether they can protect their children from a cold they have no means to repel—except by clinging to one another.

Amina Al-Hayya, a displaced woman and mother of a two-month-old infant, lives her nights in constant anxiety. Speaking in a weary voice to Palestine newspaper, she says:
“The night is the hardest time, when the sounds fade and the cold becomes more present than anything else.”

She does not place her baby on a separate mattress. Instead, she keeps him pressed against her chest throughout the night, wrapped in the few layers of blankets she managed to secure before giving birth.

She explains that his tiny body cannot withstand the cold, and that his faint crying awakens her fear for him before it awakens anyone else. She says she checks his breathing constantly, placing his small hand against her face to make sure he is still warm.

As talk of frost intensifies, her fear doubles. She owns nothing but a tent and a few blankets shared among her family of six:
“I’m afraid the cold will become more than he can bear… I’m afraid I won’t be able to protect him. He is far too small for this life.”

In a partially destroyed apartment near Al-Khor roundabout in Tel Al-Hawa neighborhood in Gaza City, Umm Zain Siyam tries to restore fragments of life to cracked walls and broken windows. After her husband was martyred, she repaired part of the apartment with her own limited means to shelter her five children, following a harsh displacement journey imposed by cold weather and storms.

As she watches her children wrap themselves in blankets to warm their hands and feet, she says:
“I try to make the place feel like a home, not just a shelter.”

Yet every new cold front brings back a sense of helplessness. She is the sole guardian of orphaned children, carrying the burden of protecting them psychologically and physically at the same time:
“My children lost their father. I don’t want them to feel they have lost safety too.”

With intensifying cold, she fears the fragile repairs will not withstand wind and frost, noting that cold seeps through windows and floors, penetrating every attempt at warmth.

In another tent in Tel Al-Hawa, Ahed Sukkar—displaced from Shuja’iyya—lives with his three children, all suffering from influenza. He describes his days as a chain of survival attempts:
“We live through the consequences of every weather depression; its effects don’t fade quickly.”

At night, he gathers firewood to light a small fire outside the tent, while he and his wife pile blankets over their children, then sleep among them to share body heat.

“We sleep pressed together… there is no other option. The only warmth we have is each other.”

With the children ill, the cold becomes a double threat—persistent coughing, occasional fevers, and a fear that never leaves the heart, while the father stands powerless except for waiting.

Meteorological services warn that Gaza will be affected by an extremely cold polar air mass, leading to a sharp drop in temperatures below seasonal averages, with a high likelihood of frost formation during night and dawn hours—especially in exposed areas—greatly increasing risks to displaced families and residents of uninhabitable homes.

In Gaza, the displaced do not ask for full warmth—only for a night that passes safely. Here, people share blankets, exchange body heat, and resist the cold with willpower and fear together.

And with every frost wave, the question remains suspended in the open air:
How long will the only warmth available to Gaza’s children remain the embrace of a fearful mother, or the body of a father trying to be the last line of defense against winter?