🔗 Share this article

'Our plea is for action, not compassion'.

A young student, twelve, a temporary shelter

It has been two years since I entered a learning environment. Two years since I heard the school chime at my former school, occupied my place and participated actively during my beloved lesson. Sometimes I still clearly recall the auditory and olfactory sensations: chalk dust, wooden scraps, joyful sounds in corridors. But my educational institution is gone; it was struck soon after the conflict started. My books were burned, and several classmates lost.

I was in the fifth year on 7 October: the concluding day I went to school. That early hours, alert signals screamed through the passageways. Some children cried, others gripped each other. Our instructor sought to soothe, but even she sounded shaky. I remember hoping for a ordinary day; instruction, break time, a poem recital. Instead, that day signaled the conclusion of my old life.

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 guardians, two brothers and female sibling in a congested safe space in this coastal area. The tent walls flap in the wind, failing to insulate. We line up for nourishment and hydration. Electricity is a dream and personal space is absent. Hope feels fragile.

At night, I gaze toward the stars through the gaps of my tent and wonder if my peers see the comparable vista. Some contact me when they are able, saying they yearn for classes and have kept their old notebooks; like treasures from a lost world. I feel remorseful because I’ve forfeited all of mine.

I once envisioned entering the education field to support local youth study, even when life was hard. Now I aim for being a reporter – to draft, to talk and to reveal the world what it represents to be a child in Gaza. 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 online. Sometimes, I visit a tiny space where volunteers teach us arithmetic and Arabic. The lessons are short – the energy supply stops or the bombing resumes but in such times, I sense being. I remember who I was: the girl who adored mathematics and poetry, who was convinced knowledge could alter reality.

Conflict has claimed innumerable things; our dwellings, schools and relatives. I grieved for my uncle, his partner, and their children. I forfeited my beautiful city, my previous home, which is merely debris now. But the hardest loss of all is education, because it represents the forfeiture of tomorrow.

To the international community, I express this: don’t let our dreams die. We don’t want pity, we demand measures. The youth are entitled to texts, educational facilities and safety. Schooling is not optional, it is a fundamental entitlement. This region is not just ruins; it is youth who persist in hoping amid unmanned aircraft at darkness. It is my account and I will continue writing, even if all I have left is a broken pencil and a fragment of ripped sheet.

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

Naglaa Weshah, 40, teacher in a refugee camp

I have been educating in the region for over ten years. Originally in that urban area, then in Deir al-Balah, and now in this refugee settlement in the heart of the region. Before the war started, I regularly instructed several sets of about 40 students each, almost two hundred forty individuals keen on education.

Educating them was my purpose and joy in existence, and I still remember the gleam in a pupil's gaze when a new idea clicked; the kind of moment every teacher strives for.

I always believed instruction should be full of life. My teaching space was a area of amusement, aesthetics, and motion. We designed geographical illustrations, dramatized bygone episodes, and turned lessons into stories.

Merriment always permeated the space as interest substituted anxiety. Certainly, even before the war, children in Gaza were always frightened. My classroom was a secure location but after that day, everything changed.

My educational institution became a refuge for relatives fleeing the explosives. Soon, it was struck and completely destroyed. There are almost no educational facilities left standing in the region now. For this period, nothing has been normal. The hostilities has shattered every aspect of our lives: safety, homes, schools, dreams. Anxiety and sorrow are ever-present realities.

A significant number of my learners are now lost – children who spoke of becoming doctors, painters, and instructors. They were deprived even the privilege of living. Those who remain live with hunger, displacement and weariness – and however, they still hold onto the thirst for knowledge.

Occasionally, when the connectivity permits, I receive messages from a handful of them. They write questioning: “Are you safe, educator?” We communicate concise phrases, abbreviated teaching, tiny sparks of connection amid the disorder. They inquire if circumstances will ever revert to standard. I tell them I don’t know.

All over the region, instructors, aid workers and charities try to teach wherever possible: in shelters, damaged classrooms, or crowded shelters. Education has become an act of defiance, a way to declare: “We are still here.” And so long as we persist in education, we will remain.

Numerous of us are also guardians. I am a mother of {three|several