🔗 Share this article

'Our plea is for action, not compassion'.

A young student, twelve, Khan Younis

For the past two years since I entered a proper school. Two years since I heard the start-of-class signal at Khawla Bint al-Azwar school, took my seat and answered questions during my preferred subject. At times I still vividly remember the sounds and smells: chalk dust, wooden scraps, laughter echoing down the halls. But my learning place was destroyed; it was bombed shortly after the hostilities erupted. My textbooks turned to ash, and some of my friends killed.

I was in fifth grade on the seventh of October: the last day I went to school. That beginning of the day, warning alarms screamed through the passageways. Some children cried, others gripped each other. Our instructor sought to soothe, but even her voice trembled. I remember wishing for a normal day; instruction, break time, a verse presentation. Instead, that day signaled the conclusion of my old life.

Hostilities have claimed innumerable aspects. But the hardest loss of all is education, because that is the loss of the future itself.

Now I dwell alongside my mother and father, male relatives and sister in a congested safe space in Khan Younis. The tent walls sway with breezes, keeping neither cold nor heat away. We line up for sustenance and drinks. Energy access is fantasy and personal space is absent. Hope feels fragile.

At night, I look up at the celestial bodies through the gaps of my tent and ponder if my peers see the same sky. Some message me when they manage, saying they miss school and have retained their former exercise books; like relics of a vanished time. I feel ashamed because I’ve forfeited all of mine.

I once envisioned entering the education field to support young residents learn, even when circumstances were difficult. Now I hope for being a writer – to compose, to speak and to demonstrate the world what it represents to be a young person in the Strip. I want to tell our stories of apprehension and need, but also courage. Because even amid these conditions, amid death and ruins, our voices refuse to be silent.

When online access exists, I attempt learning digitally. Sometimes, I go to a small tent where helpers teach us arithmetic and Arabic. The instruction is limited – the energy supply stops or the airstrikes begin again but in these instances, I feel alive. I recollect who I was: the young woman who adored mathematics and poetry, who thought learning could change the world.

The war has taken so much; our dwellings, learning centers and relatives. I mourned my family member, his wife, and their young ones. I forfeited my beloved urban area, my previous home, which is nothing but rubble now. But the most painful deprivation of all is learning, because without it, our prospects disappear.

To the global audience, I say this: keep our hopes alive. We don’t want pity, we want action. Young residents merit books, schools and security. Schooling is not a luxury, it is a basic right. This region is not just ruins; it is children who still dream under aerial surveillance at darkness. It is my account and I will keep drafting, even if all I have left is a damaged writing tool and a piece of torn paper.

'They message: "are you OK, teacher?"'.

Naglaa Weshah, 40, instructor in a refugee camp

I have been instructing in the region for more than a decade. Originally in that urban area, then in another location, and now in al-Bureij camp in the middle of the territory. Prior to hostilities, I regularly instructed multiple groups of about 40 students each, almost two hundred forty individuals keen on education.

Teaching them was my purpose and joy in life, and I still remember the sparkle in a student’s eyes when a knowledge was acquired; the sort of occasion every teacher cherishes.

I always was convinced education should be full of life. My teaching space was a space of recreation, art, and activity. We created cartographic art, performed past occurrences, and transformed instruction into narratives.

Laughter always occupied the area as curiosity substituted fear. Yes, even in earlier times, young residents were always frightened. My classroom was a place of safety but after 7 October, the situation transformed.

My educational institution became a refuge for families escaping the aerial attacks. Not long later, it was struck and completely destroyed. There are almost no schools remaining intact in the region now. For 24 months, everything has been abnormal. The conflict has broken every part of our lives: protection, residences, learning places, dreams. Apprehension and mourning are constant companions.

A significant number of my learners are now lost – minors who mentioned dreaming of physicians, painters, and instructors. They were denied even the right to exist. Those who remain experience starvation, eviction and fatigue – and however, they still cling to the thirst for knowledge.

At times, when the online access enables, I hear from a few of them. They write asking: “Are you OK, educator?” We share concise phrases, short lessons, minor flashes of interaction amid the disorder. They inquire if things will ever revert to standard. I state to them I don’t know.

All over Gaza, educators, volunteers and charities endeavor education in any feasible location: in tents, destroyed learning spaces, or packed refuges. Learning has become an gesture of resistance, a way to declare: “We are still here.” And so long as we keep acquiring knowledge, we will endure.

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