🔗 Share this article

'Our plea is for action, not compassion'.

Juwayriya Adwan, twelve, al-Mawasi

For the past 24 months since I stepped into a proper school. That long since I heard the start-of-class signal at Khawla Bint al-Azwar school, took my seat and raised my hand during my beloved lesson. Sometimes I still clearly recall the auditory and olfactory sensations: powder from the board, pencil shavings, laughter echoing down the halls. But my learning place was destroyed; it was bombed shortly after the conflict started. My books were burned, and companions perished.

I was in the fifth year on 7 October: the final day I attended classes. That morning, warning alarms sounded through the corridors. Some pupils sobbed, others held hands tightly. Our instructor sought to soothe, but even her voice trembled. I remember wishing for a routine day; instruction, recess, a poem recital. Instead, that day became the last page of my old life.

Hostilities have claimed innumerable aspects. But the most painful deprivation of all is learning, because it represents the forfeiture of tomorrow.

Now I reside with my guardians, two brothers and female sibling in a crowded shelter in this coastal area. The shelter coverings move with air currents, keeping neither cold nor heat away. We wait in line for water and food. Energy access is fantasy and seclusion is unavailable. Hope feels fragile.

At darkness, I gaze toward the night lights through the openings of my temporary home and question if my friends see the identical heavens. Some message me when they manage, expressing they miss school and have kept their previous journals; like relics of a vanished time. I feel remorseful because I’ve misplaced all of mine.

I once aspired to entering the education field to support local youth learn, even when circumstances were difficult. Now I aim for being a reporter – to write, to talk and to show the world what it signifies to be a child in Gaza. I want to narrate our accounts of apprehension and need, but also courage. Because even amid these conditions, amid fatality and debris, our words continue.

When online access exists, I attempt learning via the web. Sometimes, I go to a modest shelter where volunteers instruct us arithmetic and Arabic. The instruction is limited – the electricity cuts out or the bombing resumes but in such times, I feel alive. I recollect who I was: the student who loved numbers and poems, who thought education could transform society.

The war has taken so much; our residences, schools and families. I lost my family member, his wife, and their young ones. I lost my beautiful city, that southern city, which is only ruins 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. We don’t want pity, we demand measures. Gaza’s children deserve literature, educational facilities and protection. Learning is not optional, it is a fundamental entitlement. This region is not merely devastation; it is minors who still dream beneath the drones at evening. It is my account and I will continue writing, even if the sole items remaining is a damaged writing tool and a fragment of ripped sheet.

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

An educator, 40, instructor in a refugee camp

I have been teaching in the region for more than a decade. First in a southern city, then in Deir al-Balah, and now in this refugee settlement in the heart of the region. Prior to hostilities, I used to teach six classes of about dozens of learners, almost two hundred forty individuals eager to learn.

Teaching them was my purpose and joy in life, and I still remember the twinkle in a learner's look when a knowledge was acquired; the type of instance every educator cherishes.

I always was convinced instruction should be full of life. My teaching space was a area of amusement, creativity, and movement. We created cartographic art, performed past occurrences, and transformed instruction into narratives.

Merriment always permeated the space as curiosity substituted apprehension. Certainly, even before the war, local youth were always afraid. My learning environment was a protected zone but after that day, everything changed.

My school became a shelter for relatives escaping the aerial attacks. Shortly after, it was struck and completely destroyed. There are hardly any learning institutions left standing in Gaza now. For 24 months, nothing has been normal. The hostilities has shattered every aspect of our reality: safety, homes, learning places, aspirations. Anxiety and sorrow are ever-present realities.

A significant number of my students are now lost – youth who talked about becoming medical professionals, artists, and instructors. They were deprived even the entitlement to survival. Those who survive endure starvation, displacement and weariness – and nevertheless, they still maintain the desire for education.

Sometimes, when the internet allows, I get in touch with a small number of them. They message asking: “Are you OK, instructor?” We communicate brief words, short lessons, minor flashes of contact amid the turmoil. They inquire if situations will ever revert to standard. I tell them I have no answer.

All over the region, educators, helpers and charities endeavor education in all available spaces: in tents, ruined educational areas, or packed refuges. Learning has become an act of defiance, a way to say: “We persist.” And so long as we continue learning, we will endure.

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