'The loss of education is the loss of the future itself': Gaza's Youth and Educators on Two Years Deprived of Education.
'Our plea is for action, not compassion'.
A young student, 12, Khan Younis
For the past 24 months since I entered a proper school. Two years since I heard the start-of-class signal at my former school, occupied my place and participated actively during my preferred subject. Occasionally I still distinctly recollect the sounds and smells: powder from the board, wooden scraps, laughter echoing down the halls. But my learning place was destroyed; it was targeted not long after the war began. My books were burned, and companions perished.
I was in the fifth year on the seventh of October: the last day I attended classes. That early hours, warning alarms screamed through the corridors. Some children cried, others clasped palms firmly. Our educator attempted reassurance, but even her tone wavered. I remember longing for a routine day; instruction, intermission, a verse presentation. Instead, that day signaled the conclusion of my former reality.
Hostilities have claimed innumerable aspects. But the toughest sacrifice of all is schooling, because that is the loss of the future itself.
Now I dwell alongside my guardians, two brothers and sister in a packed refuge in Khan Younis. The temporary partitions flap in the wind, keeping neither cold nor heat away. We line up for water and food. Electricity is a dream and seclusion is unavailable. Aspiration appears brittle.
At night, I gaze toward the stars through the openings of my temporary home and wonder if my friends see the identical heavens. Some reach out when they are able, expressing they miss school and have preserved their old notebooks; like relics of a vanished time. I feel remorseful because I’ve forfeited all of mine.
I once dreamed of becoming a teacher to support local youth acquire knowledge, even when existence was challenging. Now I hope for being a writer – to compose, to talk and to reveal the world what it means to be a young person in this region. I want to share our experiences of fear and hunger, but also bravery. Because even amid these conditions, amid loss and destruction, our voices refuse to be silent.
When online access exists, I endeavor to educate myself online. Sometimes, I visit a small tent where helpers instruct us mathematics and language. The sessions are brief – the power fails or the bombing resumes but in those moments, I sense being. I recollect who I was: the student who adored mathematics and poetry, who believed knowledge could alter reality.
The war has taken so much; our dwellings, educational institutions and relatives. I mourned my family member, his wife, and their children. I forfeited my beloved urban area, Rafah, which is only ruins now. But the toughest sacrifice of all is learning, because it represents the forfeiture of tomorrow.
To the global audience, I say this: don’t let our dreams die. We don’t want pity, we want action. Gaza’s children merit books, schools and safety. Schooling is not a luxury, it is a basic right. The territory is not only destruction; it is minors who continue to aspire under aerial surveillance at night. It is my narrative and I will persist in composing, even if the sole items remaining is a fractured utensil and a fragment of ripped sheet.
'Students ask: "Teacher, are you safe?"'.
An educator, forty, instructor in al-Bureij camp
I have been instructing in the region for over ten years. Initially in Khan Younis, then in a different town, and now in this refugee settlement in the heart of the region. Before the war started, I used to teach several sets of about 40 students each, almost two hundred forty individuals enthusiastic about knowledge.
Educating them was my purpose and joy in existence, and I still remember the gleam in a student’s eyes when a concept was understood; the type of instance every teacher cherishes.
I always believed instruction should be dynamic. My learning environment was a zone of recreation, aesthetics, and activity. We painted maps, performed past occurrences, and transformed instruction into narratives.
Laughter always occupied the area as inquisitiveness replaced anxiety. Certainly, even prior to conflict, children in Gaza were always scared. My teaching space was a secure location but after the seventh, the situation transformed.
My educational institution became a safe haven for families running from the bombs. Shortly after, it was targeted and entirely ruined. There are very few schools still erect in this area now. For 24 months, nothing has been normal. The hostilities has shattered every aspect of our existence: protection, residences, learning places, hopes. Apprehension and mourning are constant companions.
A significant number of my pupils are now lost – children who talked about aspiring to be physicians, creatives, and educators. They were deprived even the privilege of living. Those who remain live with starvation, displacement and fatigue – and nevertheless, they still cling to the will to learn.
At times, when the online access permits, I get in touch with a few of them. They contact questioning: “Are you OK, educator?” We exchange concise phrases, abbreviated teaching, minor flashes of connection amid the turmoil. They inquire if situations will ever return to usual. I inform them I am uncertain.
Throughout this territory, educators, helpers and charities try to teach in any feasible location: in shelters, destroyed learning spaces, or congested safe zones. Schooling has become an gesture of resistance, a way to declare: “We persist.” And provided that we continue learning, we will endure.
Many of us are also guardians. I am a mother of {three|several
