🔗 Share this article

'Our plea is for action, not compassion'.

A young student, 12, al-Mawasi

For the past two years since I was last inside a learning environment. Two years since I heard the morning bell at Khawla Bint al-Azwar school, sat at my desk and answered questions during my beloved lesson. At times I still vividly remember the sounds and smells: writing residue, wooden scraps, laughter echoing down the halls. But my educational institution is gone; it was struck not long after the hostilities erupted. My books were burned, and some of my friends killed.

I was in fifth grade on that fateful day: the concluding day I went to school. That morning, alert signals sounded through the corridors. Some pupils sobbed, others gripped each other. Our teacher tried to calm us, but even her tone wavered. I remember wishing for a routine day; lessons, intermission, a literary performance. Instead, that day became the last page of my previous existence.

Conflict has stolen countless things. But the most painful deprivation of all is schooling, because it represents the forfeiture of tomorrow.

Now I reside with my guardians, male relatives and sister in a crowded shelter in this coastal area. The shelter coverings flap in the wind, keeping neither cold nor heat away. We queue for nourishment and hydration. Power is imaginary and personal space is absent. Optimism seems delicate.

At night, I look up at the night lights through the holes of my shelter and question if my peers see the comparable vista. Some contact me when they can, stating they long for education and have retained their former exercise books; like treasures from a lost world. I feel remorseful because I’ve forfeited all of mine.

I once aspired to pursuing pedagogy to support young residents acquire knowledge, even when existence was challenging. Now I aim for being a journalist – to draft, to communicate and to reveal the world what it means to be a minor in this region. I want to narrate our accounts of apprehension and need, but also courage. Because even here, amid fatality and debris, our voices refuse to be silent.

When connectivity is available, I try to study digitally. On other occasions, I go to a small tent where helpers instruct us math and Arabic. The instruction is limited – the energy supply stops or the attacks recommence but in those moments, I feel alive. I recall who I was: the student who cherished arithmetic and verse, who was convinced learning could change the world.

Conflict has claimed innumerable things; our residences, schools and kin. I grieved for my paternal relative, his wife, and their young ones. I forfeited my beloved urban area, my previous home, which is only ruins now. But the toughest sacrifice of all is schooling, because that is the loss of the future itself.

To the international community, I say this: preserve our aspirations. We don’t want pity, we demand measures. The youth merit books, educational facilities and protection. Schooling is not a luxury, it is a essential privilege. The territory is not merely devastation; it is children who still dream under aerial surveillance at night. It is my story and I will continue writing, even if all I have left is a damaged writing tool and a scrap of damaged material.

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

Naglaa Weshah, forty, teacher in al-Bureij camp

I have been instructing in the region for over ten years. Initially in that urban area, then in another location, and now in the central camp in the central Gaza Strip. In pre-conflict times, I typically educated six classes of about dozens of learners, almost two hundred forty individuals enthusiastic about knowledge.

Teaching them was my mission and happiness in life, and I still remember the twinkle in a student’s eyes when a new idea clicked; the type of instance every educator lives for.

I always believed education should be full of life. My learning environment was a space of amusement, aesthetics, and motion. We painted maps, acted out historical events, and converted teaching into tales.

Merriment always filled the room as curiosity replaced apprehension. Yes, even before the war, young residents were always scared. My teaching space was a place of safety but after the seventh, the situation transformed.

My educational institution became a safe haven for relatives escaping the explosives. Not long later, it was attacked and totally demolished. There are hardly any educational facilities remaining intact in this area now. For two years, everything has been abnormal. The war has destroyed every part of our reality: safety, dwellings, educational centers, dreams. Fear and grief are perpetual experiences.

Many of my pupils are now dead – youth who mentioned dreaming of physicians, creatives, and instructors. They were denied even the right to exist. Those who remain live with starvation, relocation and weariness – and however, they still cling to the thirst for knowledge.

Sometimes, when the connectivity allows, I get in touch with a handful of them. They contact questioning: “Are you OK, educator?” We exchange short messages, abbreviated teaching, tiny sparks of interaction amid the chaos. They ask if circumstances will ever revert to standard. I tell them I am uncertain.

Across this territory, instructors, volunteers and charities try to teach wherever possible: in shelters, destroyed learning spaces, or congested safe zones. Education has become an gesture of resistance, a way to declare: “We persist.” And provided that we keep acquiring knowledge, we will persist.

Many of us are also guardians. I am a guardian of {three|several