🔗 Share this article

'We don’t want pity, we want action'.

A young student, twelve, a temporary shelter

It has been 24 months since I entered a real classroom. Two years since I heard the start-of-class signal at Khawla Bint al-Azwar school, sat at my desk and raised my hand during my beloved lesson. Occasionally I still vividly remember the auditory and olfactory sensations: powder from the board, pencil shavings, cheerful echoes. But my school no longer exists; it was bombed shortly after the war began. My learning materials incinerated, and several classmates lost.

I was in elementary level on that fateful day: the final day I entered the school building. That beginning of the day, warning alarms screamed through the corridors. Some students wept, others held hands tightly. Our educator attempted reassurance, but even she sounded shaky. I remember wishing for a normal day; teaching, recess, a literary performance. Instead, that day marked the end of my former reality.

Conflict has stolen countless things. But the hardest loss of all is education, because it represents the forfeiture of tomorrow.

Now I dwell alongside my mother and father, male relatives and female sibling in a crowded shelter in Khan Younis. The tent walls move with air currents, failing to insulate. We wait in line for water and food. Electricity is a dream and personal space is absent. Hope feels fragile.

At evening, I observe the stars through the gaps of my temporary home and question if my companions see the same sky. Some reach out when they can, saying they long for education and have retained their former exercise books; like valuables from a bygone era. I feel ashamed because I’ve forfeited all of mine.

I once dreamed of entering the education field to support young residents study, even when life was hard. Now I hope for being a journalist – to compose, to communicate and to reveal the world what it signifies to be a young person in this region. I want to tell our stories of fear and hunger, but also bravery. Because even in this place, amid fatality and debris, our voices refuse to be silent.

When connectivity is available, I endeavor to educate myself via the web. Other times, I go to a tiny space where aid workers educate us arithmetic and Arabic. The sessions are brief – the power fails or the attacks recommence but in such times, I sense being. I recollect who I was: the student who loved numbers and poems, who believed learning could change the world.

Hostilities have stolen countless aspects; our residences, learning centers and kin. I grieved for my uncle, his wife, and their young ones. I forfeited my beloved urban area, that southern city, which is merely debris now. But the most painful deprivation of all is schooling, because without it, our prospects disappear.

To the international community, I express this: keep our hopes alive. Compassion isn't enough, we demand measures. Gaza’s children deserve literature, educational facilities and protection. Schooling is not an extravagance, it is a basic right. This region is not just ruins; it is children who persist in hoping under aerial surveillance at darkness. It is my narrative and I will persist in composing, even if all I have left is a broken pencil and a piece of torn paper.

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

Naglaa Weshah, forty, teacher in al-Bureij camp

I have been teaching in Gaza for more than a decade. Originally in a southern city, then in another location, and presently in this refugee settlement in the central Gaza Strip. Before the war started, I typically educated several sets of about dozens of learners, almost two hundred forty individuals eager to learn.

Instructing them was my vocation and delight in life, and I still recall the sparkle in a pupil's gaze when a new idea clicked; the kind of moment every educator lives for.

I always believed instruction should be vibrant. My teaching space was a zone of amusement, aesthetics, and activity. We painted maps, acted out historical events, and converted teaching into tales.

Merriment always occupied the area as curiosity displaced anxiety. Certainly, even prior to conflict, children in Gaza were always afraid. My classroom was a protected zone but after the seventh, the situation transformed.

My school became a shelter for families fleeing the explosives. Shortly after, it was targeted and totally demolished. There are very few educational facilities still erect in the region now. For this period, nothing has been normal. The conflict has destroyed every aspect of our lives: safety, dwellings, schools, hopes. Anxiety and sorrow are ever-present realities.

A significant number of my students are now dead – minors who mentioned aspiring to be medical professionals, artists, and teachers. They were deprived even the privilege of living. Those who are still here live with hunger, relocation and weariness – and yet, they still cling to the desire for education.

At times, when the connectivity permits, I hear from a small number of them. They contact asking: “Are you safe, educator?” We communicate brief words, abbreviated teaching, small glimmers of connection amid the chaos. They ask if circumstances will ever return to usual. I state to them I have no answer.

Across the region, instructors, volunteers and charities endeavor education in any feasible location: in shelters, ruined educational areas, or congested safe zones. Education has become an act of defiance, a way to express: “We persist.” And provided that we persist in education, we will persist.

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