🔗 Share this article

'We seek action, not sympathy'.

Juwayriya Adwan, 12, Khan Younis

It has been 24 months since I was last inside a real classroom. Two years since I heard the start-of-class signal at Khawla Bint al-Azwar school, occupied my place and raised my hand during my favourite class. Sometimes I still vividly remember the auditory and olfactory sensations: chalk dust, wooden scraps, joyful sounds in corridors. But my learning place was destroyed; it was bombed shortly after the conflict started. My learning materials incinerated, and some of my friends killed.

I was in the fifth year on the seventh of October: the last day I entered the school building. That early hours, alert signals screamed through the corridors. Some students wept, others clasped palms firmly. Our instructor sought to soothe, but even her tone wavered. I remember wishing for a ordinary day; teaching, break time, a verse presentation. Instead, that day marked the end of my previous existence.

Hostilities have claimed innumerable aspects. But the toughest sacrifice of all is education, because it represents the forfeiture of tomorrow.

Now I live with my parents, siblings and sister in a packed refuge in this coastal area. The shelter coverings move with air currents, failing to insulate. We queue for sustenance and drinks. Electricity is a dream and privacy doesn’t exist. Hope feels fragile.

At night, I gaze toward the night lights through the gaps of my shelter and question if my companions see the same sky. Some contact me when they can, stating they yearn for classes and have kept their previous journals; like valuables from a bygone era. I feel ashamed because I’ve forfeited all of mine.

I once dreamed of becoming a teacher to help Gaza’s children acquire knowledge, even when life was hard. Now I aim for being a reporter – to draft, to speak and to demonstrate the world what it represents to be a young person in Gaza. I want to narrate our accounts of fear and hunger, but also courage. Because even here, amid loss and destruction, our voices refuse to be silent.

When connectivity is available, I try to study digitally. Sometimes, I visit a modest shelter where helpers instruct us math and Arabic. The instruction is limited – the power fails or the airstrikes begin again but in these instances, I feel alive. I remember who I was: the girl who adored mathematics and poetry, who believed education could transform society.

Conflict has claimed innumerable things; our homes, schools and kin. I mourned my paternal relative, his partner, and their offspring. I forfeited my cherished hometown, my previous home, which is only ruins now. But the hardest loss of all is schooling, because without it, our prospects disappear.

To the world, I state this: keep our hopes alive. Compassion isn't enough, we demand measures. Gaza’s children merit literature, educational facilities and protection. Education is not an extravagance, it is a fundamental entitlement. The territory is not merely devastation; it is youth who persist in hoping beneath the drones at evening. It is my narrative and I will persist in composing, even if all I have left is a fractured utensil and a fragment of ripped sheet.

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

An educator, 40, instructor in central Gaza

I have been teaching in the region for more than a decade. Originally in that urban area, then in Deir al-Balah, and currently in this refugee settlement in the heart of the region. Prior to hostilities, I used to teach multiple groups of about 40 students each, nearly 240 young minds eager to learn.

Instructing them was my purpose and joy in life, and I still recall the sparkle in a student’s eyes when a new idea clicked; the kind of moment every instructor cherishes.

I always thought instruction should be full of life. My learning environment was a zone of amusement, creativity, and motion. We designed geographical illustrations, performed past occurrences, and converted teaching into tales.

Merriment always occupied the area as curiosity displaced anxiety. Indeed, even before the war, young residents were always afraid. My teaching space was a secure location but after the seventh, all was altered.

My educational institution became a shelter for relatives running from the aerial attacks. Not long later, it was attacked and entirely ruined. There are very few educational facilities still erect in Gaza now. For two years, all has been unusual. The hostilities has shattered every facet of our reality: safety, residences, schools, dreams. Apprehension and mourning are constant companions.

Numerous of my students are now lost – youth who spoke of becoming doctors, artists, and teachers. They were denied even the right to exist. Those who survive experience hunger, displacement and fatigue – and nevertheless, they still cling to the thirst for knowledge.

Sometimes, when the internet permits, I get in touch with a handful of them. They write inquiring: “How are you, instructor?” We share concise phrases, abbreviated teaching, small glimmers of contact amid the disorder. They inquire if situations will ever go back to normal. I state to them I have no answer.

All over Gaza, instructors, aid workers and charities try to teach in any feasible location: in shelters, destroyed learning spaces, or packed refuges. Education has become an demonstration of perseverance, a way to say: “Our presence continues.” And as long as we keep acquiring knowledge, we will remain.

Numerous of us are also caregivers. I am a parent of {three|several