🔗 Share this article

'We seek action, not sympathy'.

A young student, 12, Khan Younis

For the past two years since I entered a learning environment. Two years since I heard the morning bell at my former school, took my seat and answered questions during my preferred subject. Sometimes I still clearly recall the sounds and smells: writing residue, wooden scraps, cheerful echoes. But my educational institution is gone; it was bombed soon after the hostilities erupted. My textbooks turned to ash, and several classmates lost.

I was in the fifth year on 7 October: the last day I entered the school building. That beginning of the day, warning alarms blared through the passageways. Some children cried, others gripped each other. Our teacher tried to calm us, but even her voice trembled. I remember longing for a routine day; instruction, intermission, a verse presentation. Instead, that day signaled the conclusion of my old life.

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

Now I reside with my parents, siblings and sister in a packed refuge in Khan Younis. The shelter coverings flap in the wind, failing to insulate. We line up for sustenance and drinks. Energy access is fantasy and privacy doesn’t exist. Hope feels fragile.

At night, I gaze toward the night lights through the holes of my shelter and ponder if my peers see the identical heavens. Some reach out when they are able, stating they long for education and have preserved their previous journals; like treasures from a lost world. I feel remorseful because I’ve forfeited all of mine.

I once envisioned pursuing pedagogy to assist local youth study, even when circumstances were difficult. Now I hope for being a reporter – to compose, to speak and to demonstrate the world what it represents to be a young person in this region. I want to narrate our accounts of fear and hunger, but also bravery. Because even amid these conditions, amid fatality and debris, our voices refuse to be silent.

When connectivity is available, I attempt learning digitally. Sometimes, I go to a tiny space where volunteers educate us math and Arabic. The lessons are short – the electricity cuts out or the airstrikes begin again but in these instances, I sense being. I remember who I was: the student who adored mathematics and poetry, who was convinced knowledge could alter reality.

The war has taken so much; our residences, educational institutions and relatives. I mourned my paternal relative, his spouse, and their children. I lost my beloved urban area, my previous home, which is merely debris now. But the hardest loss of all is schooling, because that is the loss of the future itself.

To the international community, I state this: preserve our aspirations. Compassion isn't enough, we require steps. Gaza’s children deserve texts, learning environments and security. Learning is not optional, it is a fundamental entitlement. The territory is not just ruins; it is children who still dream under aerial surveillance at night. It is my narrative and I will persist in composing, even if the sole items remaining is a broken pencil and a scrap of damaged material.

'Pupils inquire: "Are you alright, educator?"'.

Naglaa Weshah, 40, instructor in al-Bureij camp

I have been teaching in Gaza for a substantial period. Originally in Khan Younis, then in a different town, and currently in al-Bureij camp in the heart of the region. Prior to hostilities, I regularly instructed multiple groups of about 40 students each, almost two hundred forty individuals keen on education.

Educating them was my purpose and joy in life, and I still recollect the gleam in a student’s eyes when a concept was understood; the sort of occasion every educator cherishes.

I always was convinced education should be vibrant. My teaching space was a space of play, creativity, and motion. We painted maps, acted out historical events, and transformed instruction into narratives.

Merriment always permeated the space as inquisitiveness displaced apprehension. Certainly, even in earlier times, local youth were always afraid. My classroom was a protected zone but after the seventh, the situation transformed.

My school became a shelter for households escaping the aerial attacks. Not long later, it was attacked and totally demolished. There are hardly any schools still erect in Gaza now. For two years, all has been unusual. The war has destroyed every aspect of our reality: safety, residences, learning places, dreams. Fear and grief are perpetual experiences.

Many of my pupils are now lost – youth who mentioned aspiring to be medical professionals, creatives, and educators. They were denied even the entitlement to survival. Those who remain experience malnutrition, relocation and fatigue – and however, they still hold onto the thirst for knowledge.

At times, when the online access enables, I hear from a small number of them. They contact asking: “How are you, instructor?” We communicate short messages, short lessons, small glimmers of connection amid the disorder. They question if things will ever revert to standard. I state to them I am uncertain.

Across Gaza, instructors, helpers and charities try to teach in any feasible location: in temporary structures, ruined educational areas, or packed refuges. Learning has become an demonstration of perseverance, a way to declare: “We are still here.” And as long as we keep acquiring knowledge, we will endure.

Many of us are also guardians. I am a guardian of {three|several