🔗 Share this article

'Our plea is for action, not compassion'.

Juwayriya Adwan, twelve, Khan Younis

It has been 24 months since I entered a proper school. That long since I listened to the start-of-class signal at Khawla Bint al-Azwar school, occupied my place and answered questions during my beloved lesson. Occasionally I still distinctly recollect the auditory and olfactory sensations: writing residue, wooden scraps, laughter echoing down the halls. But my educational institution is gone; it was struck soon after the war began. My learning materials incinerated, and companions perished.

I was in elementary level on that fateful day: the last day I went to school. That morning, alert signals blared through the halls. Some students wept, others clasped palms firmly. Our instructor sought to soothe, but even her voice trembled. I remember wishing for a normal day; teaching, intermission, a literary performance. Instead, that day became the last page of my previous existence.

Conflict has stolen countless things. But the most painful deprivation of all is schooling, because that is the loss of the future itself.

Now I dwell alongside my guardians, male relatives and female sibling in a congested safe space in al-Mawasi. The tent walls move with air currents, keeping neither cold nor heat away. We queue for water and food. Power is imaginary and privacy doesn’t exist. Hope feels fragile.

At evening, I look up at the stars through the gaps of my tent and question if my friends see the same sky. Some message me when they are able, stating they long for education and have kept their previous journals; like relics of a vanished time. I feel remorseful because I’ve forfeited all of mine.

I once envisioned pursuing pedagogy to support local youth acquire knowledge, even when circumstances were difficult. Now I hope for being a journalist – to compose, to talk and to demonstrate the world what it represents to be a young person in this region. I want to share our experiences of apprehension and need, but also courage. Because even amid these conditions, amid loss and destruction, our expressions persist.

When there’s some internet, I endeavor to educate myself digitally. On other occasions, I go to a tiny space where aid workers instruct us math and Arabic. The instruction is limited – the power fails 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 believed knowledge could alter reality.

Hostilities have stolen countless aspects; our homes, schools and relatives. I lost my family member, his spouse, and their young ones. I forfeited my beloved urban area, my previous home, which is merely debris now. But the hardest loss of all is learning, because that is the loss of the future itself.

To the global audience, I express this: preserve our aspirations. We don’t want pity, we want action. The youth merit texts, learning environments and security. Education is not an extravagance, it is a fundamental entitlement. The territory is not merely devastation; it is minors who still dream amid unmanned aircraft at night. It is my story and I will persist in composing, even if my only possessions is a broken pencil and a piece of torn paper.

'Students ask: "Teacher, are you safe?"'.

An educator, forty, teacher in al-Bureij camp

I have been instructing in the region for more than a decade. First in that urban area, then in a different town, and currently in the central camp in the central Gaza Strip. Before the war started, I used to teach six classes of about 40 students each, almost two hundred forty individuals eager to learn.

Educating them was my purpose and joy in reality, and I still recollect the sparkle in a learner's look when a knowledge was acquired; the type of instance every teacher strives for.

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

Merriment always permeated the space as inquisitiveness replaced anxiety. Indeed, even prior to conflict, young residents were always scared. My classroom was a protected zone but after the seventh, the situation transformed.

My educational institution became a refuge for households fleeing the aerial attacks. Not long later, it was struck and entirely ruined. There are almost no educational facilities remaining intact in this area now. For two years, all has been unusual. The hostilities has broken every part of our reality: security, residences, educational centers, hopes. Apprehension and mourning are constant companions.

Many of my students are now deceased – children who mentioned dreaming of physicians, creatives, and educators. They were refused even the right to exist. Those who survive endure hunger, eviction and weariness – and nevertheless, they still cling to the will to learn.

At times, when the online access allows, I hear from a few of them. They contact inquiring: “Are you OK, educator?” We communicate brief words, abbreviated teaching, tiny sparks of interaction amid the turmoil. They question if circumstances will ever revert to standard. I tell them I don’t know.

All over this territory, educators, volunteers and charities try to teach wherever possible: in tents, ruined educational areas, or packed refuges. Learning has become an gesture of resistance, a way to say: “We are still here.” And as long as we keep acquiring knowledge, we will remain.

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