🔗 Share this article

'Our plea is for action, not compassion'.

Juwayriya Adwan, twelve, al-Mawasi

It has been two years since I was last inside a real classroom. Two years since I heard the school chime at my former school, occupied my place and raised my hand during my favourite class. Occasionally I still clearly recall the familiar scents and noises: powder from the board, sharpener leftovers, joyful sounds in corridors. But my educational institution is gone; it was targeted soon after the hostilities erupted. My textbooks turned to ash, and several classmates lost.

I was in elementary level on 7 October: the final day I attended classes. That early hours, warning alarms screamed through the passageways. Some students wept, others clasped palms firmly. Our teacher tried to calm us, but even her tone wavered. I remember hoping for a routine day; lessons, break time, a poem recital. Instead, that day became the last page of my former reality.

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

Now I live with my guardians, male relatives and female sibling in a congested safe space in Khan Younis. The tent walls move with air currents, keeping neither cold nor heat away. We queue for sustenance and drinks. Electricity is a dream and personal space is absent. Hope feels fragile.

At evening, I look up at the stars through the holes of my temporary home and question if my companions see the same sky. Some contact me when they manage, stating they yearn for classes and have preserved their previous journals; like relics of a vanished time. I feel guilty because I’ve lost all of mine.

I once dreamed of becoming a teacher to support local youth study, even when life was hard. Now I dream of being a reporter – to write, to talk and to show the world what it signifies to be a child in Gaza. I want to share our experiences of apprehension and need, but also fortitude. Because even amid these conditions, amid death and ruins, our words continue.

When online access exists, I try to study digitally. Other times, I attend a small tent where helpers teach us arithmetic and Arabic. The instruction is limited – the energy supply stops or the attacks recommence but in those moments, I sense being. I recall who I was: the girl who loved numbers and poems, who was convinced learning could change the world.

The war has taken so much; our homes, learning centers and families. I lost my paternal relative, his partner, and their children. I lost my beautiful city, my previous home, which is nothing but rubble now. But the most painful deprivation of all is schooling, because it represents the forfeiture of tomorrow.

To the global audience, I state this: preserve our aspirations. Compassion isn't enough, we require steps. The youth are entitled to texts, learning environments and safety. Learning is not an extravagance, it is a fundamental entitlement. The territory is not just ruins; it is children who continue to aspire beneath the drones at darkness. It is my story and I will keep drafting, even if all I have left is a broken pencil and a fragment of ripped sheet.

'Pupils inquire: "Are you alright, educator?"'.

Naglaa Weshah, forty, instructor in a refugee camp

I have been educating in this area for over ten years. Initially in Khan Younis, then in Deir al-Balah, and currently in al-Bureij camp in the heart of the region. In pre-conflict times, I typically educated multiple groups of about 40 students each, hundreds of eager students enthusiastic about knowledge.

Instructing them was my purpose and joy in reality, and I still recollect the twinkle in a learner's look when a concept was understood; the type of instance every educator lives for.

I always believed learning should be full of life. My teaching space was a space of amusement, aesthetics, and motion. We designed geographical illustrations, acted out historical events, and transformed instruction into narratives.

Joy always occupied the area as inquisitiveness replaced anxiety. Certainly, even in earlier times, children in Gaza were always scared. My teaching space was a secure location but after the seventh, the situation transformed.

My learning center became a refuge for families fleeing the explosives. Shortly after, it was targeted and entirely ruined. There are hardly any schools still erect in the region now. For 24 months, nothing has been normal. The conflict has broken every facet of our lives: safety, dwellings, schools, dreams. Fear and grief are perpetual experiences.

Many of my pupils are now lost – children who mentioned becoming doctors, creatives, and instructors. They were deprived even the right to exist. Those who remain live with malnutrition, displacement and fatigue – and yet, they still cling to the thirst for knowledge.

Sometimes, when the internet enables, I receive messages from a few of them. They contact questioning: “How are you, instructor?” We exchange brief words, abbreviated teaching, tiny sparks of contact amid the turmoil. They ask if situations will ever return to usual. I inform them I have no answer.

Throughout this territory, educators, aid workers and non-profits try to teach in any feasible location: in tents, damaged classrooms, or congested safe zones. Education has become an demonstration of perseverance, a way to declare: “Our presence continues.” And as long as we keep acquiring knowledge, we will persist.

Numerous of us are also parents. I am a guardian of {three|several