🔗 Share this article

'We seek action, not sympathy'.

A young student, twelve, a temporary shelter

For the past two years since I entered a real classroom. That long since I heard the morning bell at the institution I attended, sat at my desk and raised my hand during my preferred subject. At times I still clearly recall the auditory and olfactory sensations: powder from the board, sharpener leftovers, laughter echoing down the halls. But my school no longer exists; it was targeted soon after the war began. My learning materials incinerated, and several classmates lost.

I was in fifth grade on the seventh of October: the concluding day I went to school. That early hours, alert signals blared through the corridors. Some children cried, others clasped palms firmly. Our educator attempted reassurance, but even her voice trembled. I remember wishing for a ordinary day; instruction, break time, a poem recital. Instead, that day marked the end of my previous existence.

Hostilities have claimed innumerable aspects. But the most painful deprivation of all is learning, because that is the loss of the future itself.

Now I live with my mother and father, male relatives and female sibling in a packed refuge in this coastal area. The shelter coverings move with air currents, providing no climate control. We queue for nourishment and hydration. Electricity is a dream and personal space is absent. Optimism seems delicate.

At night, I look up at the celestial bodies through the openings of my temporary home and ponder if my companions see the comparable vista. Some message me when they are able, stating they long for education and have kept their previous journals; like treasures from a lost world. I feel guilty because I’ve lost all of mine.

I once dreamed of entering the education field to help Gaza’s children learn, even when circumstances were difficult. Now I aim for being a reporter – to write, to communicate and to reveal the world what it represents to be a child in the Strip. I want to narrate our accounts of apprehension and need, but also courage. Because even here, amid fatality and debris, our expressions persist.

When connectivity is available, I attempt learning digitally. On other occasions, I visit a small tent where helpers educate us arithmetic and Arabic. The lessons are short – the power fails or the airstrikes begin again but in those moments, I feel alive. I recall who I was: the girl who adored mathematics and poetry, who believed knowledge could alter reality.

Hostilities have stolen countless aspects; our residences, schools and relatives. I grieved for my uncle, his wife, and their young ones. I lost my beloved urban area, my previous home, which is nothing but rubble now. But the hardest loss of all is education, because without it, our prospects disappear.

To the international community, I express this: don’t let our dreams die. We don’t want pity, we require steps. Gaza’s children deserve texts, schools and safety. Learning is not an extravagance, it is a basic right. This region is not merely devastation; it is youth who still dream amid unmanned aircraft at darkness. It is my account and I will keep drafting, even if all I have left is a fractured utensil and a piece of torn paper.

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

An educator, forty, instructor in a refugee camp

I have been educating in this area for more than a decade. Originally in that urban area, then in another location, and now in this refugee settlement in the heart of the region. Before the war started, I used to teach six classes of about fourty pupils per class, almost two hundred forty individuals eager to learn.

Instructing them was my vocation and delight in life, and I still recollect the sparkle in a learner's look when a new idea clicked; the sort of occasion every instructor strives for.

I always thought education should be vibrant. My teaching space was a area of play, art, and motion. We created cartographic art, dramatized bygone episodes, and converted teaching into tales.

Laughter always occupied the area as interest displaced apprehension. Certainly, even prior to conflict, local youth were always afraid. My learning environment was a protected zone but after the seventh, all was altered.

My learning center became a shelter for families escaping the bombs. Soon, it was targeted and totally demolished. There are hardly any learning institutions remaining intact in this area now. For this period, everything has been abnormal. The war has broken every part of our existence: security, homes, learning places, dreams. Anxiety and sorrow are perpetual experiences.

A significant number of my pupils are now dead – youth who mentioned dreaming of medical professionals, artists, and instructors. They were denied even the privilege of living. Those who are still here live with starvation, relocation and exhaustion – and nevertheless, they still cling to the desire for education.

At times, when the connectivity allows, I receive messages from a small number of them. They message asking: “How are you, teacher?” We exchange short messages, short lessons, minor flashes of contact amid the chaos. They inquire if circumstances will ever return to usual. I tell them I have no answer.

Throughout the region, educators, aid workers and non-profits try to teach in any feasible location: in tents, destroyed learning spaces, or congested safe zones. Education has become an gesture of resistance, a way to say: “We are still here.” And as long as we continue learning, we will persist.

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