In the picture familiar to us all, a mother wakes her children in the morning, hurries them to get dressed, and checks their backpacks before they head out to school. She worries if they are late, and waits for their return along with the small stories they bring home about the classroom and their friends.
اضافة اعلان
In Gaza, a mother welcomes winter for the fourth time, with the sole wish that the night passes and she finds them alive with the first light of dawn.
She checks the tent's ceiling, lifts their bedding off the ground, and distributes whatever worn blankets she has left. She places a scrap of cloth over a gap where a biting wind seeps through, and pulls the youngest close to her chest. When the rain begins, she watches the water slowly creep toward their sleeping spot; she knows all too well the cost of a soaked mattress, and has no idea where she might find another dry patch in this open expanse.
For four rounds, winter returns heavy, and the family confronts it with whatever remains. But what is truly left after the loss of home, the relentless cycle of displacement, and the exhausting wait?
The children have grown up in the open; some have reached school age without ever seeing a blackboard or sitting at a desk, while others cling to the memory of a classmate who is gone. With most schools reduced to rubble, reclaiming education is no longer just a matter of rebuilding walls; it requires a warm body and a secure spirit capable of opening a book and taking in a sentence. Protecting them from the freezing cold is ultimately a defense of their last right to dream.
Time is running out, and delay carries a heavy toll deducted from a child’s health and the endurance of a mother exhausting her final wits every single night. We should not wait until small bodies freeze just to write about how heartbreaking the tragedy was.
I think of that mother when the rain eases slightly, reaching her hand beneath the cover to reassure herself of the warmth of their breath. With the arrival of this winter, she deserved a roof she could trust, a dry bed, and a peaceful morning where she wakes them up for school.
Confronting this tragedy does not begin with high-level resolutions; it begins with us first. It starts with the decision not to grow accustomed to the scene, not to look past the freezing cold of the tents as an inevitable fate, and to act immediately with whatever direct support we can offer to reinforce a tent or clothe a fragile body.
Then from our communities, which bear the duty of organized collective solidarity—keeping the voices of these children alive in our spaces and institutions, and turning fleeting sympathy into a sustained commitment that shames inaction.
And finally, before the world and its international institutions, which must question their own laws and conscience: providing a blanket is not the ceiling of justice. The true ceiling is lifting all restrictions at the crossings and ending this slaughter that has made simply surviving until morning a child's highest hope.
Warmth is a right that cannot be postponed. Before the winter winds howl once more, let us act from where we stand and with what we have, before we ask ourselves tomorrow: how did we leave them alone in the cold?
