'Without education, we lose our future': Gaza's Children and Teachers on Two Years Without School.

'Our plea is for action, not compassion'.

Juwayriya Adwan, twelve, al-Mawasi

For the past two years since I was last inside a learning environment. That long since I listened to the morning bell at my former school, sat at my desk and participated actively during my favourite class. Occasionally I still vividly remember the familiar scents and noises: chalk dust, sharpener leftovers, joyful sounds in corridors. But my educational institution is gone; it was targeted not long after the conflict started. My books were burned, and some of my friends killed.

I was in fifth grade on 7 October: the last day I attended classes. That morning, air raid sirens blared through the corridors. Some pupils sobbed, others held hands tightly. Our educator attempted reassurance, but even her voice trembled. I remember wishing for a normal day; teaching, break time, a literary performance. Instead, that day became the last page of my previous existence.

The war has taken so much. But the hardest loss of all is learning, because that is the loss of the future itself.

Now I live with my mother and father, two brothers and female sibling in a packed refuge in this coastal area. The tent walls sway with breezes, providing no climate control. We wait in line for nourishment and hydration. Energy access is fantasy and personal space is absent. Optimism seems delicate.

At darkness, I look up at the night lights through the gaps of my temporary home and question if my peers see the same sky. Some message me when they can, saying they yearn for classes and have preserved their former exercise books; like relics of a vanished time. I feel remorseful because I’ve misplaced all of mine.

I once aspired to becoming a teacher to assist Gaza’s children study, even when life was hard. Now I dream of being a writer – to write, to speak and to demonstrate the world what it represents to be a child in the Strip. I want to share our experiences of apprehension and need, but also courage. Because even in this place, amid fatality and debris, our words continue.

When online access exists, I attempt learning via the web. On other occasions, I visit a tiny space where aid workers educate us math and Arabic. The lessons are short – the power fails or the airstrikes begin again but in such times, I experience vitality. I remember who I was: the girl who loved numbers and poems, who believed learning could change the world.

The war has taken so much; our dwellings, schools and kin. I grieved for my uncle, his partner, and their young ones. I lost my cherished hometown, my previous home, which is merely debris now. But the hardest loss of all is learning, because it represents the forfeiture of tomorrow.

To the world, I say this: keep our hopes alive. We don’t want pity, we want action. Gaza’s children deserve texts, learning environments and protection. Schooling is not a luxury, it is a basic right. Gaza is not only destruction; it is children who persist in hoping beneath the drones at darkness. It is my story and I will persist in composing, even if all I have left is a fractured utensil and a scrap of damaged material.

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

Naglaa Weshah, 40, instructor in central Gaza

I have been instructing in this area for over ten years. First in a southern city, then in Deir al-Balah, and presently in the central camp in the heart of the region. In pre-conflict times, I used to teach six classes of about 40 students each, almost two hundred forty individuals eager to learn.

Instructing them was my purpose and joy in life, and I still recall the gleam in a pupil's gaze when a new idea clicked; the kind of moment every teacher lives for.

I always was convinced instruction should be vibrant. My learning environment was a zone of recreation, art, and movement. We designed geographical illustrations, performed past occurrences, and converted teaching into tales.

Merriment always filled the room as curiosity substituted anxiety. Certainly, even in earlier times, children in Gaza were always scared. My learning environment was a place of safety but after that day, the situation transformed.

My educational institution became a shelter for relatives running from the explosives. Soon, it was targeted and totally demolished. There are almost no schools remaining intact in Gaza now. For this period, everything has been abnormal. The hostilities has shattered every part of our lives: security, homes, schools, dreams. Anxiety and sorrow are constant companions.

Numerous of my students are now lost – minors who talked about aspiring to be medical professionals, painters, and educators. They were deprived even the right to exist. Those who survive endure hunger, eviction and exhaustion – and yet, they still hold onto the will to learn.

Occasionally, when the connectivity enables, I receive messages from a small number of them. They message inquiring: “Are you OK, instructor?” We share concise phrases, short lessons, small glimmers of connection amid the turmoil. They inquire if situations will ever go back to normal. I inform them I am uncertain.

Throughout Gaza, teachers, helpers and charities endeavor education in all available spaces: in shelters, ruined educational areas, or packed refuges. Schooling has become an gesture of resistance, a way to declare: “We persist.” And so long as we persist in education, we will persist.

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