🔗 Share this article

'We seek action, not sympathy'.

Juwayriya Adwan, 12, a temporary shelter

For the past 24 months since I was last inside a proper school. That long since I listened to the school chime at my former school, occupied my place and raised my hand during my favourite class. Sometimes I still vividly remember the sounds and smells: powder from the board, wooden scraps, laughter echoing down the halls. But my educational institution is gone; 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 that fateful day: the concluding day I went to school. That morning, warning alarms sounded through the passageways. Some pupils sobbed, others clasped palms firmly. Our instructor sought to soothe, but even she sounded shaky. I remember longing for a routine day; teaching, break time, a literary performance. Instead, that day became the last page of my previous existence.

Conflict has stolen countless things. But the hardest loss of all is learning, because that is the loss of the future itself.

Now I live with my parents, siblings and female sibling in a crowded shelter in this coastal area. The temporary partitions move with air currents, failing to insulate. We queue for sustenance and drinks. Electricity is a dream and personal space is absent. Hope feels fragile.

At night, I look up at the night lights through the gaps of my temporary home and ponder if my friends see the same sky. Some reach out when they are able, expressing they miss school and have kept their former exercise books; like treasures from a lost world. I feel remorseful because I’ve lost all of mine.

I once envisioned becoming a teacher to help young residents acquire knowledge, even when circumstances were difficult. Now I aim for being a writer – to compose, to communicate and to demonstrate the world what it signifies to be a minor in Gaza. I want to share our experiences of anxiety and deprivation, but also fortitude. Because even amid these conditions, amid fatality and debris, our words continue.

When online access exists, I endeavor to educate myself via the web. Other times, I attend a small tent where volunteers teach us arithmetic and Arabic. The instruction is limited – the electricity cuts out or the airstrikes begin again but in such times, I sense being. I recall who I was: the young woman who loved numbers and poems, who believed education could transform society.

The war has taken so much; our homes, educational institutions and families. I lost my family member, his spouse, and their young ones. I forfeited my beloved urban area, that southern city, which is only ruins now. But the toughest sacrifice of all is schooling, because it represents the forfeiture of tomorrow.

To the international community, I say this: keep our hopes alive. Compassion isn't enough, we require steps. The youth deserve books, learning environments and security. Schooling is not an extravagance, it is a essential privilege. The territory is not only destruction; it is children who persist in hoping amid unmanned aircraft at darkness. It is my account and I will persist in composing, even if the sole items remaining is a fractured utensil 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 the region for a substantial period. First in a southern city, then in Deir al-Balah, and currently in al-Bureij camp in the central Gaza Strip. In pre-conflict times, I regularly instructed six classes of about fourty pupils per class, almost two hundred forty individuals eager to learn.

Instructing them was my purpose and joy in reality, and I still recollect the twinkle in a pupil's gaze when a concept was understood; the type of instance every teacher strives for.

I always was convinced learning should be full of life. My classroom was a area of play, creativity, and motion. We created cartographic art, performed past occurrences, and transformed instruction into narratives.

Joy always permeated the space as curiosity displaced fear. Certainly, even prior to conflict, young residents were always scared. My learning environment was a secure location but after 7 October, everything changed.

My school became a safe haven for relatives escaping the bombs. Soon, it was attacked and totally demolished. There are very few educational facilities still erect in the region now. For two years, everything has been abnormal. The hostilities has shattered every facet of our reality: security, homes, educational centers, dreams. Fear and grief are constant companions.

Many of my students are now lost – children who spoke of aspiring to be physicians, creatives, and instructors. They were denied even the entitlement to survival. Those who remain experience hunger, relocation and exhaustion – and nevertheless, they still maintain the thirst for knowledge.

At times, when the connectivity permits, I get in touch with a small number of them. They write inquiring: “Are you safe, instructor?” We share concise phrases, short lessons, tiny sparks of interaction amid the disorder. They question if situations will ever return to usual. I tell them I don’t know.

Across Gaza, teachers, helpers and organizations attempt instruction in all available spaces: in tents, damaged classrooms, or crowded shelters. Education has become an gesture of resistance, a way to declare: “We persist.” And so long as we continue learning, we will persist.

A significant number of us are also caregivers. I am a guardian of {three|several