December doesn’t feel like an ending anymore.
It feels like the world holding its breath, hoping nothing worse happens next.
Every year closes, and instead of relief, there’s a quiet question hanging in the air:
What didn’t stop this time?
Because while calendars reset, suffering doesn’t.
In Gaza, winter doesn’t arrive gently.
It arrives soaked and unrelenting.
Rain collapses plastic tents.
Cold settles into bodies already weakened by hunger.
Families sleep knowing the night itself might be what takes someone from them.
A one-month-old baby named Saeed didn’t survive the cold.
Saeed - Gaza Strip - 1 MONTH OLD
Not because help doesn’t exist.
But because warmth, shelter, and protection were kept out of reach.
That’s the part that makes my chest tighten.
Not just that he died.
But that his death was preventable.
Gaza doesn’t get pauses.
Loss keeps piling up until the world stops reacting and starts adjusting.
And that’s where my dread comes from.
Not only from what is happening,
but from how long it’s been allowed to happen.
From the fear that we are learning to live beside it.
But here is what keeps that from being the end of the story.
This winter is not sealed shut.
Cold only wins when warmth never arrives.
Hunger only decides outcomes when food is kept out.
And I have watched that equation change.
I’ve seen tents reinforced before the rain came.
I’ve seen meals land in hands that had already given up on the day.
I’ve seen children survive nights they weren’t meant to survive.
Not because circumstances softened.
But because people intervened.
That’s where hope actually lives.
Not in waiting.
In interruption.
Not in believing things will improve on their own.
In deciding they can’t be allowed to get worse.
And that decision is still available.
With urgency, and belief in what we can still change,
Hafsa