🔗 Share this article

'We don’t want pity, we want action'.

A young student, twelve, al-Mawasi

It has been two years since I stepped into a real classroom. That long since I heard the morning bell at my former school, occupied my place and participated actively during my favourite class. Occasionally I still clearly recall the auditory and olfactory sensations: powder from the board, wooden scraps, cheerful echoes. But my learning place was destroyed; it was bombed soon after the war began. My textbooks turned to ash, and some of my friends killed.

I was in the fifth year on that fateful day: the concluding day I attended classes. That morning, warning alarms sounded through the passageways. Some students wept, others clasped palms firmly. Our educator attempted reassurance, but even she sounded shaky. I remember hoping for a ordinary 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 hardest loss of all is education, because it represents the forfeiture of tomorrow.

Now I live with my guardians, two brothers and female sibling in a congested safe space in this coastal area. The tent walls sway with breezes, providing no climate control. We queue for sustenance and drinks. Power is imaginary and privacy doesn’t exist. Optimism seems delicate.

At evening, I gaze toward the stars through the openings of my shelter and wonder if my friends see the identical heavens. Some reach out when they manage, expressing they long for education and have kept their previous journals; like relics of a vanished time. I feel remorseful because I’ve forfeited all of mine.

I once dreamed of pursuing pedagogy to support local youth study, even when existence was challenging. Now I dream of being a reporter – to draft, to talk and to show the world what it means to be a child in this region. I want to tell our stories of apprehension and need, but also fortitude. Because even here, amid loss and destruction, our expressions persist.

When there’s some internet, I attempt learning digitally. Sometimes, I attend a tiny space where volunteers educate us math and Arabic. The sessions are brief – the electricity cuts out or the airstrikes begin again but in such times, I feel alive. I recollect who I was: the girl who loved numbers and poems, who believed knowledge could alter reality.

Hostilities have stolen countless aspects; our residences, schools and families. I grieved for my family member, his wife, and their children. I said goodbye to my beloved urban area, Rafah, which is nothing but rubble now. But the most painful deprivation of all is education, because that is the loss of the future itself.

To the global audience, I say this: preserve our aspirations. We don’t want pity, we require steps. The youth merit texts, educational facilities and protection. Learning is not a luxury, it is a basic right. Gaza is not just ruins; it is children who continue to aspire amid unmanned aircraft at night. It is my story and I will keep drafting, even if my only possessions is a fractured utensil and a fragment of ripped sheet.

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

An educator, 40, teacher in central Gaza

I have been teaching in this area for over ten years. Originally in that urban area, then in a different town, and currently in the central camp in the middle of the territory. Before the war started, I typically educated several sets of about dozens of learners, almost two hundred forty individuals enthusiastic about knowledge.

Teaching them was my vocation and delight in reality, and I still recall the gleam in a pupil's gaze when a knowledge was acquired; the type of instance every educator lives for.

I always thought learning should be full of life. My learning environment was a zone of play, art, and activity. We designed geographical illustrations, dramatized bygone episodes, and transformed instruction into narratives.

Joy always filled the room as inquisitiveness substituted anxiety. Certainly, even in earlier times, local youth were always scared. My teaching space was a protected zone but after 7 October, everything changed.

My school became a safe haven for relatives escaping the aerial attacks. Not long later, it was targeted and entirely ruined. There are almost no educational facilities still erect in this area now. For two years, nothing has been normal. The hostilities has broken every aspect of our existence: safety, residences, educational centers, aspirations. Fear and grief are constant companions.

A significant number of my students are now lost – youth who mentioned dreaming of medical professionals, painters, and educators. They were refused even the entitlement to survival. Those who are still here live with starvation, eviction and exhaustion – and however, they still hold onto the thirst for knowledge.

At times, when the connectivity allows, I receive messages from a handful of them. They message inquiring: “Are you OK, educator?” We share concise phrases, miniature instruction, small glimmers of connection amid the turmoil. They inquire if things will ever return to usual. I inform them I have no answer.

Throughout Gaza, teachers, helpers and non-profits endeavor education in all available spaces: in tents, destroyed learning spaces, or packed refuges. Education has become an act of defiance, a way to declare: “We persist.” And provided that we continue learning, we will endure.

A significant number of us are also guardians. I am a parent of {three|several