🔗 Share this article

'We don’t want pity, we want action'.

A young student, 12, a temporary shelter

For the past 24 months since I stepped into a real classroom. Two years since I heard the morning bell at my former school, occupied my place and participated actively during my favourite class. At times I still distinctly recollect the familiar scents and noises: chalk dust, wooden scraps, cheerful echoes. But my educational institution is gone; it was struck not long after the war began. My textbooks turned to ash, and some of my friends killed.

I was in elementary level on 7 October: the last day I went to school. That early hours, warning alarms sounded through the passageways. Some students wept, others gripped each other. Our educator attempted reassurance, but even she sounded shaky. I remember longing for a routine day; lessons, intermission, a literary performance. Instead, that day became the last page of my previous existence.

Conflict has stolen countless things. But the hardest loss of all is education, because that is the loss of the future itself.

Now I live with my mother and father, siblings and sister in a congested safe space in al-Mawasi. The tent walls move with air currents, keeping neither cold nor heat away. We queue for nourishment and hydration. Energy access is fantasy and personal space is absent. Hope feels fragile.

At evening, I gaze toward the night lights through the holes of my shelter and wonder if my companions see the identical heavens. Some message me when they are able, saying they long for education and have retained their previous journals; like relics of a vanished time. I feel guilty because I’ve forfeited all of mine.

I once dreamed of entering the education field to support local youth acquire knowledge, even when circumstances were difficult. Now I hope for being a journalist – to write, to communicate and to show the world what it represents to be a child in this region. I want to tell our stories of apprehension and need, but also fortitude. Because even in this place, amid fatality and debris, our voices refuse to be silent.

When online access exists, I attempt learning digitally. On other occasions, I attend a modest shelter where aid workers teach us mathematics and language. The instruction is limited – the electricity cuts out or the attacks recommence but in such times, I sense being. I recall who I was: the student who cherished arithmetic and verse, who thought learning could change the world.

The war has taken so much; our residences, learning centers and relatives. I lost my uncle, his spouse, and their children. I forfeited my cherished hometown, that southern city, which is only ruins now. But the hardest loss of all is education, because without it, our prospects disappear.

To the global audience, I state this: keep our hopes alive. We don’t want pity, we demand measures. Gaza’s children deserve books, educational facilities and safety. Learning is not optional, it is a essential privilege. The territory is not just ruins; it is children who still dream amid unmanned aircraft at evening. It is my story and I will continue writing, even if all I have left is a fractured utensil and a piece of torn paper.

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

Naglaa Weshah, forty, instructor in al-Bureij camp

I have been educating in Gaza for a substantial period. Initially in a southern city, then in a different town, and currently in the central camp in the central Gaza Strip. Prior to hostilities, I regularly instructed several sets of about 40 students each, hundreds of eager students keen on education.

Educating them was my purpose and joy in reality, and I still recollect the gleam in a student’s eyes when a new idea clicked; the type of instance every educator lives for.

I always was convinced learning should be dynamic. My learning environment was a space of recreation, creativity, and activity. We painted maps, acted out historical events, and transformed instruction into narratives.

Merriment always filled the room as interest replaced anxiety. Indeed, even before the war, young residents were always afraid. My classroom was a place of safety but after 7 October, the situation transformed.

My learning center became a safe haven for relatives fleeing the aerial attacks. Not long later, it was struck and totally demolished. There are almost no educational facilities still erect in the region now. For 24 months, nothing has been normal. The war has broken every part of our existence: safety, homes, schools, dreams. Anxiety and sorrow are ever-present realities.

A significant number of my pupils are now deceased – minors who mentioned dreaming of physicians, painters, and educators. They were denied even the privilege of living. Those who survive experience hunger, relocation and weariness – and however, they still hold onto the will to learn.

Sometimes, when the online access enables, I get in touch with a small number of them. They write inquiring: “Are you OK, educator?” We exchange brief words, short lessons, minor flashes of contact amid the disorder. They question if situations will ever revert to standard. I state to them I have no answer.

Across the region, educators, volunteers and non-profits attempt instruction wherever possible: in tents, ruined educational areas, or crowded shelters. Schooling has become an gesture of resistance, a way to express: “We are still here.” And as long as we continue learning, we will remain.

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