🔗 Share this article

'We don’t want pity, we want action'.

A young student, 12, Khan Younis

For the past two years since I entered a learning environment. That long since I listened to the start-of-class signal at the institution I attended, occupied my place and raised my hand during my beloved lesson. Sometimes I still distinctly recollect the familiar scents and noises: powder from the board, pencil shavings, joyful sounds in corridors. But my school no longer exists; it was targeted shortly after the conflict started. My books were burned, and some of my friends killed.

I was in the fifth year on that fateful day: the last day I went to school. That beginning of the day, warning alarms screamed through the halls. Some pupils sobbed, others held hands tightly. Our educator attempted reassurance, but even she sounded shaky. I remember wishing for a ordinary day; instruction, break time, a literary performance. Instead, that day signaled the conclusion of my former reality.

The war has taken so much. But the hardest loss of all is education, because without it, our prospects disappear.

Now I live with my mother and father, male relatives and female sibling in a congested safe space in Khan Younis. The temporary partitions flap in the wind, keeping neither cold nor heat away. We wait in line for water and food. Power is imaginary and privacy doesn’t exist. Hope feels fragile.

At evening, I gaze toward the celestial bodies through the openings of my shelter and question if my peers see the same sky. Some reach out when they can, stating they miss school and have kept their former exercise books; like valuables from a bygone era. I feel ashamed because I’ve lost all of mine.

I once aspired to entering the education field to assist young residents learn, even when existence was challenging. Now I dream of being a writer – to write, to talk and to demonstrate the world what it represents to be a young person in the Strip. I want to narrate our accounts 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 attempt learning via the web. Sometimes, I attend a tiny space where helpers instruct us mathematics and language. The sessions are brief – the electricity cuts out or the airstrikes begin again but in these instances, I sense being. I recollect who I was: the girl who adored mathematics and poetry, who was convinced education could transform society.

Hostilities have stolen countless aspects; our residences, schools and families. I grieved for my uncle, his wife, and their young ones. I lost my cherished hometown, Rafah, which is nothing but rubble now. But the toughest sacrifice of all is learning, because it represents the forfeiture of tomorrow.

To the international community, I express this: don’t let our dreams die. We don’t want pity, we want action. Gaza’s children are entitled to texts, educational facilities and security. Learning is not a luxury, it is a fundamental entitlement. This region is not only destruction; it is youth who persist in hoping beneath the drones at darkness. It is my narrative and I will persist in composing, even if the sole items remaining is a fractured utensil and a scrap of damaged material.

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

Naglaa Weshah, forty, teacher in a refugee camp

I have been instructing in the region for over ten years. 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 typically educated six classes of about 40 students each, almost two hundred forty individuals keen on education.

Teaching them was my mission and happiness in existence, and I still recall the twinkle in a pupil's gaze when a new idea clicked; the sort of occasion every teacher lives for.

I always believed instruction should be vibrant. My classroom was a area of play, creativity, and activity. We designed geographical illustrations, dramatized bygone episodes, and turned lessons into stories.

Laughter always permeated the space as interest substituted fear. Yes, even before the war, children in Gaza were always frightened. My classroom was a protected zone but after that day, all was altered.

My learning center became a safe haven for relatives running from the explosives. Shortly after, it was targeted and totally demolished. There are very few educational facilities left standing in the region now. For two years, everything has been abnormal. The war has broken every facet of our lives: protection, homes, schools, aspirations. Anxiety and sorrow are ever-present realities.

A significant number of my learners are now dead – youth who talked about becoming medical professionals, creatives, and teachers. They were denied even the privilege of living. Those who are still here experience malnutrition, displacement and exhaustion – and nevertheless, they still maintain the desire for education.

Sometimes, when the internet permits, I receive messages from a handful of them. They message questioning: “How are you, teacher?” We share concise phrases, abbreviated teaching, minor flashes of connection amid the turmoil. They inquire if circumstances will ever revert to standard. I tell them I am uncertain.

Across the region, instructors, aid workers and organizations attempt instruction in all available spaces: in temporary structures, destroyed learning spaces, or crowded shelters. Schooling has become an act of defiance, a way to declare: “We persist.” 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