🔗 Share this article

'Our plea is for action, not compassion'.

Juwayriya Adwan, 12, Khan Younis

For the past 24 months since I was last inside a learning environment. That long since I heard the school chime at the institution I attended, took my seat and answered questions during my beloved lesson. At times I still clearly recall the sounds and smells: writing residue, sharpener leftovers, joyful sounds in corridors. But my learning place was destroyed; it was targeted shortly after the hostilities erupted. My books were burned, 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, alert signals sounded through the corridors. Some pupils sobbed, others clasped palms firmly. Our instructor sought to soothe, but even she sounded shaky. I remember wishing for a ordinary day; lessons, break time, a literary performance. Instead, that day became the last page of my old life.

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

Now I dwell alongside my mother and father, siblings and female sibling in a congested safe space in this coastal area. The temporary partitions sway with breezes, keeping neither cold nor heat away. We queue for water and food. Electricity is a dream and personal space is absent. Optimism seems delicate.

At darkness, I observe the night lights through the gaps of my tent and question if my friends see the identical heavens. Some reach out when they are able, expressing they miss school and have preserved their old notebooks; like relics of a vanished time. I feel guilty because I’ve misplaced all of mine.

I once aspired to entering the education field to help Gaza’s children study, even when circumstances were difficult. Now I hope for being a reporter – to write, to speak and to demonstrate the world what it represents to be a child in this region. I want to narrate our accounts of fear and hunger, but also courage. Because even amid these conditions, amid fatality and debris, our expressions persist.

When there’s some internet, I try to study online. Sometimes, I attend a small tent where helpers instruct us mathematics and language. The lessons are short – the electricity cuts out or the bombing resumes but in those moments, I experience vitality. I recollect who I was: the young woman who cherished arithmetic and verse, who thought education could transform society.

The war has taken so much; our dwellings, learning centers and relatives. I lost my family member, his wife, and their offspring. I forfeited my beloved urban area, Rafah, which is merely debris now. But the toughest sacrifice of all is learning, 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 require steps. The youth merit books, educational facilities and security. Education is not an extravagance, it is a fundamental entitlement. This region is not just ruins; it is youth who still dream under aerial surveillance at night. It is my narrative and I will continue writing, even if the sole items remaining is a damaged writing tool and a piece of torn paper.

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

An educator, 40, instructor in central Gaza

I have been instructing in the region for more than a decade. Originally in that urban area, then in another location, and currently in al-Bureij camp in the central Gaza Strip. Before the war started, I regularly instructed six classes of about dozens of learners, almost two hundred forty individuals enthusiastic about knowledge.

Instructing them was my mission and happiness in life, and I still recollect the sparkle in a learner's look when a knowledge was acquired; the type of instance every educator cherishes.

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

Laughter always filled the room as inquisitiveness displaced apprehension. Yes, even in earlier times, local youth were always frightened. My teaching space was a protected zone but after that day, the situation transformed.

My learning center became a refuge for families running from the aerial attacks. Soon, it was targeted and entirely ruined. There are hardly any schools still erect in Gaza now. For 24 months, nothing has been normal. The hostilities has shattered every facet of our reality: security, homes, schools, aspirations. Anxiety and sorrow are constant companions.

Numerous of my learners are now deceased – children who spoke of dreaming of doctors, creatives, and instructors. They were refused even the right to exist. Those who remain live with malnutrition, eviction and weariness – and yet, they still cling to the will to learn.

Sometimes, when the internet enables, I get in touch with a handful of them. They message asking: “How are you, educator?” We exchange short messages, abbreviated teaching, small glimmers of connection amid the chaos. They question if circumstances will ever revert to standard. I state to them I have no answer.

Throughout Gaza, instructors, volunteers and non-profits try to teach wherever possible: in tents, destroyed learning spaces, or crowded shelters. Schooling has become an act of defiance, a way to declare: “Our presence continues.” And provided that we persist in education, we will remain.

Numerous of us are also caregivers. I am a guardian of {three|several