🔗 Share this article

'Our plea is for action, not compassion'.

A young student, 12, al-Mawasi

It has been 24 months since I was last inside a learning environment. That long since I listened to the start-of-class signal at the institution I attended, sat at my desk and answered questions during my beloved lesson. Occasionally I still clearly recall the auditory and olfactory sensations: powder from the board, wooden scraps, joyful sounds in corridors. But my school no longer exists; it was bombed soon after the conflict started. My books were burned, and companions perished.

I was in elementary level on that fateful day: the concluding day I attended classes. That morning, alert signals sounded through the halls. Some children cried, others clasped palms firmly. Our instructor sought to soothe, but even her tone wavered. I remember hoping for a normal day; lessons, intermission, a literary performance. Instead, that day signaled the conclusion of my old life.

Conflict has stolen countless things. But the hardest loss of all is learning, because without it, our prospects disappear.

Now I dwell alongside my mother and father, two brothers and sister in a congested safe space in Khan Younis. The shelter coverings move with air currents, keeping neither cold nor heat away. We queue for water and food. Electricity is a dream and seclusion is unavailable. Aspiration appears brittle.

At night, I observe the stars through the openings of my tent and wonder if my companions see the comparable vista. Some reach out when they are able, expressing they long for education and have retained their former exercise books; like treasures from a lost world. I feel remorseful because I’ve forfeited all of mine.

I once envisioned entering the education field to assist local youth learn, even when circumstances were difficult. Now I aim for being a writer – to draft, to talk and to reveal the world what it means to be a young person in the Strip. I want to share our experiences of anxiety and deprivation, but also bravery. Because even amid these conditions, amid loss and destruction, our expressions persist.

When online access exists, I attempt learning via the web. Sometimes, I attend a tiny space where aid workers instruct us arithmetic and Arabic. The sessions are brief – the power fails or the bombing resumes but in these instances, I sense being. I recollect who I was: the girl who loved numbers and poems, who was convinced education could transform society.

Hostilities have stolen countless aspects; our residences, learning centers and families. I lost my paternal relative, his spouse, and their offspring. I said goodbye to my cherished hometown, that southern city, which is nothing but rubble now. But the most painful deprivation of all is education, because that is the loss of the future itself.

To the world, I state this: don’t let our dreams die. We don’t want pity, we require steps. Gaza’s children are entitled to texts, educational facilities and security. Learning is not optional, it is a essential privilege. Gaza is not merely devastation; it is youth who continue to aspire beneath the drones at evening. It is my narrative and I will persist in composing, even if the sole items remaining is a broken pencil and a fragment of ripped sheet.

'Students ask: "Teacher, are you safe?"'.

An educator, forty, instructor in al-Bureij camp

I have been educating in the region for more than a decade. First in Khan Younis, then in another location, and currently in al-Bureij camp in the middle of the territory. Before the war started, I regularly instructed several sets of about fourty pupils per class, almost two hundred forty individuals keen on education.

Teaching them was my purpose and joy in reality, and I still recollect the sparkle in a pupil's gaze when a knowledge was acquired; the sort of occasion every teacher strives for.

I always was convinced education should be full of life. My teaching space was a zone of play, art, and motion. We painted maps, performed past occurrences, and turned lessons into stories.

Merriment always filled the room as inquisitiveness replaced apprehension. Certainly, even before the war, children in Gaza were always frightened. My teaching space was a protected zone but after that day, the situation transformed.

My school became a safe haven for households running from the explosives. Soon, it was attacked and entirely ruined. There are hardly any educational facilities left standing in the region now. For this period, nothing has been normal. The conflict has broken every part of our existence: safety, residences, educational centers, aspirations. Apprehension and mourning are perpetual experiences.

Many of my students are now dead – youth who spoke of dreaming of physicians, creatives, and instructors. They were denied even the entitlement to survival. Those who remain live with starvation, eviction and exhaustion – and nevertheless, they still hold onto the thirst for knowledge.

Sometimes, when the connectivity allows, I hear from a few of them. They write questioning: “Are you OK, teacher?” We share brief words, short lessons, small glimmers of interaction amid the disorder. They ask if situations will ever revert to standard. I inform them I am uncertain.

Across this territory, instructors, aid workers and non-profits try to teach in all available spaces: in tents, damaged classrooms, or packed refuges. Education has become an gesture of resistance, a way to declare: “We persist.” And provided that we persist in education, we will endure.

Numerous of us are also parents. I am a parent of {three|several