🔗 Share this article

'We don’t want pity, we want action'.

Juwayriya Adwan, 12, Khan Younis

For the past 24 months since I was last inside a proper school. That long since I heard the school chime at Khawla Bint al-Azwar school, took my seat and raised my hand during my preferred subject. At times I still vividly remember the sounds and smells: powder from the board, sharpener leftovers, cheerful echoes. But my learning place was destroyed; it was bombed soon after the conflict started. My books were burned, and companions perished.

I was in the fifth year on that fateful day: the final day I attended classes. That morning, air raid sirens sounded through the passageways. Some children cried, others clasped palms firmly. Our instructor sought to soothe, but even she sounded shaky. I remember longing for a normal day; teaching, break time, a poem recital. Instead, that day signaled the conclusion of my previous existence.

The war has taken so much. But the hardest loss of all is education, because without it, our prospects disappear.

Now I reside with my mother and father, two brothers and female sibling in a congested safe space in Khan Younis. The tent walls sway with breezes, providing no climate control. We queue for nourishment and hydration. Energy access is fantasy and privacy doesn’t exist. Optimism seems delicate.

At night, I gaze toward the night lights through the holes of my shelter and wonder if my companions see the identical heavens. Some reach out when they manage, saying they miss school and have retained their previous journals; like treasures from a lost world. I feel guilty because I’ve misplaced all of mine.

I once dreamed of pursuing pedagogy to help young residents study, even when life was hard. Now I hope for being a reporter – to draft, to communicate and to reveal the world what it represents to be a child in Gaza. I want to share our experiences of anxiety and deprivation, but also fortitude. Because even in this place, amid fatality and debris, our voices refuse to be silent.

When connectivity is available, I attempt learning digitally. Other times, I go to a small tent where volunteers educate us mathematics and language. The sessions are brief – the power fails or the airstrikes begin again but in those moments, I feel alive. I recollect who I was: the girl who cherished arithmetic and verse, who thought learning could change the world.

Conflict has claimed innumerable things; our residences, educational institutions and families. I grieved for my uncle, his spouse, and their children. I said goodbye to my cherished hometown, Rafah, which is merely debris now. But the most painful deprivation of all is education, because it represents the forfeiture of tomorrow.

To the world, I say this: don’t let our dreams die. We don’t want pity, we demand measures. Gaza’s children are entitled to books, schools and protection. Schooling is not optional, it is a basic right. Gaza is not just ruins; it is minors who still dream amid unmanned aircraft at evening. It is my story and I will persist in composing, even if the sole items remaining is a fractured utensil and a piece of torn paper.

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

Naglaa Weshah, forty, instructor in central Gaza

I have been instructing in the region for more than a decade. Originally in a southern city, then in another location, and now in this refugee settlement in the middle of the territory. Before the war started, I regularly instructed multiple groups of about fourty pupils per class, almost two hundred forty individuals keen on education.

Instructing them was my purpose and joy in reality, and I still recollect the gleam in a pupil's gaze when a new idea clicked; the sort of occasion every teacher cherishes.

I always was convinced education should be vibrant. My classroom was a space of recreation, aesthetics, and activity. We designed geographical illustrations, performed past occurrences, and transformed instruction into narratives.

Laughter always occupied the area as interest replaced apprehension. Indeed, even in earlier times, local youth were always afraid. My teaching space was a secure location but after that day, everything changed.

My educational institution became a shelter for relatives running from the explosives. Soon, it was struck and completely destroyed. There are almost no learning institutions still erect in Gaza now. For this period, nothing has been normal. The conflict has destroyed every part of our reality: safety, homes, educational centers, hopes. Fear and grief are perpetual experiences.

Numerous of my learners are now dead – children who talked about becoming physicians, painters, and teachers. They were denied even the right to exist. Those who are still here experience hunger, relocation and weariness – and however, they still maintain the desire for education.

Occasionally, when the online access permits, I get in touch with a handful of them. They message questioning: “How are you, instructor?” We exchange short messages, abbreviated teaching, minor flashes of contact amid the chaos. They ask if things will ever return to usual. I tell them I don’t know.

Throughout the region, educators, volunteers and charities attempt instruction in all available spaces: in temporary structures, destroyed learning spaces, or congested safe zones. Schooling has become an act of defiance, a way to express: “Our presence continues.” And provided that we continue learning, we will endure.

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