🔗 Share this article

'Our plea is for action, not compassion'.

A young student, twelve, a temporary shelter

It has been 24 months since I was last inside a learning environment. Two years since I listened to the morning bell at my former school, occupied my place and raised my hand during my beloved lesson. At times I still distinctly recollect the auditory and olfactory sensations: writing residue, pencil shavings, laughter echoing down the halls. But my school no longer exists; it was struck soon after the hostilities erupted. My books were burned, and companions perished.

I was in the fifth year on the seventh of October: the final day I attended classes. That beginning of the day, air raid sirens screamed through the halls. Some pupils sobbed, others held hands tightly. Our instructor sought to soothe, but even her tone wavered. I remember longing for a routine day; instruction, intermission, a verse presentation. Instead, that day became the last page of my former reality.

Hostilities have claimed innumerable aspects. But the most painful deprivation of all is learning, because without it, our prospects disappear.

Now I reside with my mother and father, male relatives and female sibling in a congested safe space in Khan Younis. The temporary partitions flap in the wind, providing no climate control. We wait in line for sustenance and drinks. Energy access is fantasy and privacy doesn’t exist. Hope feels fragile.

At night, I look up at the night lights through the gaps of my temporary home and ponder if my companions see the comparable vista. Some message me when they manage, stating they miss school and have retained their previous journals; like valuables from a bygone era. I feel ashamed because I’ve lost all of mine.

I once dreamed of entering the education field to help young residents acquire knowledge, even when life was hard. Now I aim for being a journalist – to draft, to speak and to demonstrate the world what it signifies to be a minor in the Strip. I want to share our experiences of apprehension and need, but also courage. Because even amid these conditions, amid fatality and debris, our words continue.

When there’s some internet, I attempt learning online. Other times, I attend a modest shelter where aid workers teach us mathematics and language. The instruction is limited – the energy supply stops or the attacks recommence but in these instances, I experience vitality. I remember who I was: the student who cherished arithmetic and verse, who thought education could transform society.

The war has taken so much; our residences, learning centers and relatives. I lost my uncle, his spouse, and their young ones. I lost my cherished hometown, that southern city, which is only ruins now. But the hardest loss of all is learning, because that is the loss of the future itself.

To the world, I say this: keep our hopes alive. We seek no sympathy, we demand measures. Young residents merit books, schools and safety. Schooling is not an extravagance, it is a fundamental entitlement. This region is not merely devastation; it is youth who still dream beneath the drones at darkness. It is my account and I will persist in composing, even if all I have left is a damaged writing tool and a piece of torn paper.

'Pupils inquire: "Are you alright, educator?"'.

Naglaa Weshah, 40, teacher in a refugee camp

I have been educating in this area for a substantial period. First in a southern city, then in a different town, and now in this refugee settlement in the central Gaza Strip. In pre-conflict times, I regularly instructed six classes of about dozens of learners, nearly 240 young minds keen on education.

Educating them was my purpose and joy in life, and I still recollect the gleam in a student’s eyes when a knowledge was acquired; the kind of moment every educator lives for.

I always thought learning should be vibrant. My teaching space was a space of play, art, and activity. We created cartographic art, performed past occurrences, and transformed instruction into narratives.

Joy always filled the room as interest displaced fear. Indeed, even in earlier times, children in Gaza were always afraid. My learning environment was a place of safety but after the seventh, all was altered.

My learning center became a safe haven for relatives fleeing the explosives. Not long later, it was struck and entirely ruined. There are almost no educational facilities still erect in Gaza now. For this period, everything has been abnormal. The hostilities has shattered every aspect of our lives: protection, residences, learning places, hopes. Apprehension and mourning are constant companions.

Many of my pupils are now lost – youth who spoke of dreaming of doctors, creatives, and educators. They were denied even the entitlement to survival. Those who are still here live with malnutrition, eviction and weariness – and nevertheless, they still maintain the thirst for knowledge.

Occasionally, when the internet permits, I receive messages from a small number of them. They contact asking: “Are you safe, instructor?” We exchange concise phrases, miniature instruction, small glimmers of contact amid the turmoil. They inquire if circumstances will ever revert to standard. I tell them I am uncertain.

Across Gaza, instructors, volunteers and charities endeavor education in all available spaces: in shelters, destroyed learning spaces, or congested safe zones. Education has become an gesture of resistance, a way to express: “We persist.” And provided that we persist in education, we will endure.

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