🔗 Share this article

'We seek action, not sympathy'.

A young student, 12, a temporary shelter

For the past 24 months since I stepped into a proper school. That long since I heard the morning bell at the institution I attended, occupied my place and participated actively during my favourite class. Sometimes I still clearly recall the auditory and olfactory sensations: chalk dust, wooden scraps, joyful sounds in corridors. But my school no longer exists; it was targeted soon after the hostilities erupted. My learning materials incinerated, and companions perished.

I was in the fifth year on that fateful day: the concluding day I went to school. That early hours, warning alarms screamed through the halls. Some pupils sobbed, others held hands tightly. Our educator attempted reassurance, but even her voice trembled. I remember hoping for a routine day; teaching, recess, 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 learning, because it represents the forfeiture of tomorrow.

Now I reside with my mother and father, siblings and sister in a crowded shelter in Khan Younis. The temporary partitions move with air currents, keeping neither cold nor heat away. We line up for water and food. Electricity is a dream and seclusion is unavailable. Hope feels fragile.

At night, I look up at the celestial bodies through the gaps of my tent and ponder if my companions see the same sky. Some reach out when they are able, saying they miss school and have retained their previous journals; like relics of a vanished time. I feel guilty because I’ve lost all of mine.

I once aspired to pursuing pedagogy to support local youth acquire knowledge, even when circumstances were difficult. Now I hope for being a writer – to draft, to communicate and to demonstrate the world what it means to be a minor in Gaza. I want to share our experiences of anxiety and deprivation, but also courage. Because even amid these conditions, amid fatality and debris, our words continue.

When online access exists, I try to study online. Other times, I attend a small tent where aid workers instruct us mathematics and language. The sessions are brief – the power fails or the attacks recommence but in those moments, I experience vitality. I recall who I was: the student who cherished arithmetic and verse, who thought knowledge could alter reality.

The war has taken so much; our homes, learning centers and families. I lost my family member, his spouse, and their offspring. I forfeited my beautiful city, Rafah, which is nothing but rubble now. But the toughest sacrifice of all is schooling, because without it, our prospects disappear.

To the world, I state this: keep our hopes alive. Compassion isn't enough, we require steps. Gaza’s children are entitled to literature, educational facilities and safety. Education is not an extravagance, it is a basic right. This region is not just ruins; it is minors who still dream beneath the drones at night. It is my narrative and I will persist in composing, even if the sole items remaining is a damaged writing tool and a scrap of damaged material.

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

Naglaa Weshah, forty, instructor in al-Bureij camp

I have been instructing in the region for more than a decade. First in Khan Younis, then in Deir al-Balah, and now in al-Bureij camp in the middle of the territory. Before the war started, I typically educated six classes of about dozens of learners, almost two hundred forty individuals enthusiastic about knowledge.

Teaching them was my vocation and delight in reality, and I still recollect the sparkle in a pupil's gaze when a new idea clicked; the sort of occasion every educator lives for.

I always thought education should be full of life. My learning environment was a zone of recreation, creativity, and movement. We painted maps, dramatized bygone episodes, and turned lessons into stories.

Joy always permeated the space as curiosity substituted fear. Certainly, even in earlier times, children in Gaza were always frightened. My classroom was a place of safety but after that day, the situation transformed.

My school became a safe haven for relatives fleeing the explosives. Soon, it was attacked and totally demolished. There are hardly any educational facilities left standing in the region now. For 24 months, all has been unusual. The hostilities has broken every part of our reality: security, dwellings, educational centers, dreams. Apprehension and mourning are ever-present realities.

A significant number of my learners are now dead – youth who spoke of becoming physicians, artists, and instructors. They were deprived even the entitlement to survival. Those who survive live with starvation, relocation and exhaustion – and however, they still hold onto the will to learn.

At times, when the connectivity permits, I hear from a small number of them. They write asking: “Are you OK, instructor?” We share short messages, short lessons, small glimmers of interaction amid the disorder. They question if things will ever revert to standard. I inform them I have no answer.

All over the region, instructors, volunteers and charities endeavor education in all available spaces: in shelters, destroyed learning spaces, or crowded shelters. Education has become an act of defiance, a way to say: “We are still here.” And as long as we keep acquiring knowledge, we will persist.

A significant number of us are also parents. I am a mother of {three|several