🔗 Share this article

'We don’t want pity, we want action'.

A young student, twelve, a temporary shelter

It has been 24 months since I was last inside a real classroom. Two years since I listened to the school chime at Khawla Bint al-Azwar school, took my seat and answered questions during my favourite class. At times I still distinctly recollect the sounds and smells: chalk dust, wooden scraps, laughter echoing down the halls. But my learning place was destroyed; it was targeted not long after the war began. My learning materials incinerated, and several classmates lost.

I was in fifth grade on 7 October: the final day I went to school. That beginning of the day, warning alarms sounded through the corridors. Some children cried, others gripped each other. Our instructor sought to soothe, but even she sounded shaky. I remember hoping for a normal day; lessons, recess, a verse presentation. Instead, that day marked the end of my previous existence.

Conflict has stolen countless things. But the hardest loss of all is learning, because it represents the forfeiture of tomorrow.

Now I dwell alongside my parents, male relatives and female sibling in a packed refuge in al-Mawasi. The shelter coverings flap in the wind, keeping neither cold nor heat away. We line up for water and food. Energy access is fantasy and personal space is absent. Hope feels fragile.

At evening, I observe the stars through the gaps of my tent and wonder if my peers see the same sky. Some contact me when they can, saying they long for education and have kept their old notebooks; like valuables from a bygone era. I feel guilty because I’ve misplaced all of mine.

I once dreamed of entering the education field to support Gaza’s children study, even when existence was challenging. Now I dream of being a reporter – to draft, to communicate and to reveal the world what it represents to be a young person in this region. I want to tell our stories of anxiety and deprivation, but also courage. Because even here, amid death and ruins, our words continue.

When there’s some internet, I attempt learning via the web. Sometimes, I go to a modest shelter where aid workers educate us math and Arabic. The instruction is limited – the power fails or the bombing resumes but in these instances, I sense being. I remember who I was: the girl who cherished arithmetic and verse, who believed education could transform society.

Conflict has claimed innumerable things; our residences, learning centers and relatives. I lost my paternal relative, his partner, and their children. I lost my beautiful city, Rafah, which is merely debris now. But the hardest loss of all is education, because that is the loss of the future itself.

To the world, I express this: don’t let our dreams die. We don’t want pity, we demand measures. Gaza’s children are entitled to texts, schools and safety. Learning is not a luxury, it is a basic right. This region is not merely devastation; it is youth who still dream under aerial surveillance at darkness. It is my story and I will persist in composing, even if the sole items remaining is a broken pencil and a piece of torn paper.

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

An educator, 40, instructor in al-Bureij camp

I have been instructing in Gaza for over ten years. Originally in Khan Younis, then in a different town, and presently in this refugee settlement in the middle of the territory. Prior to hostilities, I regularly instructed six classes of about fourty pupils per class, almost two hundred forty individuals keen on education.

Teaching them was my purpose and joy in reality, and I still remember the sparkle in a student’s eyes when a new idea clicked; the sort of occasion every educator cherishes.

I always believed instruction should be full of life. My learning environment was a space of recreation, aesthetics, and motion. We painted maps, acted out historical events, and transformed instruction into narratives.

Merriment always permeated the space as interest replaced anxiety. Yes, even in earlier times, children in Gaza were always frightened. My learning environment was a protected zone but after 7 October, the situation transformed.

My learning center became a refuge for families escaping the explosives. Not long later, it was attacked and entirely ruined. There are almost no learning institutions left standing in this area now. For two years, all has been unusual. The war has broken every part of our lives: security, residences, learning places, dreams. Fear and grief are constant companions.

Numerous of my pupils are now dead – children who mentioned becoming physicians, painters, and educators. They were deprived even the right to exist. Those who are still here live with malnutrition, eviction and fatigue – and however, they still maintain the thirst for knowledge.

Sometimes, when the connectivity allows, I hear from a small number of them. They message questioning: “Are you safe, educator?” We communicate concise phrases, miniature instruction, small glimmers of interaction amid the disorder. They ask if situations will ever revert to standard. I inform them I have no answer.

Throughout the region, instructors, volunteers and non-profits attempt instruction wherever possible: in temporary structures, destroyed learning spaces, or packed refuges. Schooling has become an demonstration of perseverance, a way to say: “Our presence continues.” And provided that we persist in education, we will persist.

Many of us are also parents. I am a mother of {three|several