'Without education, we lose our future': Gaza's Children and Educators on 24 Months Without Education.

'We don’t want pity, we want action'.

Juwayriya Adwan, twelve, a temporary shelter

It has been 24 months since I stepped into a proper school. That long since I listened to the school chime at my former school, occupied my place and answered questions during my favourite class. Occasionally I still vividly remember the auditory and olfactory sensations: powder from the board, pencil shavings, joyful sounds in corridors. But my educational institution is gone; it was bombed shortly after the conflict started. My learning materials incinerated, and several classmates lost.

I was in elementary level on the seventh of October: the concluding day I entered the school building. That morning, air raid sirens sounded through the corridors. Some students wept, others gripped each other. Our teacher tried to calm us, but even her tone wavered. I remember wishing for a normal day; instruction, recess, a verse presentation. Instead, that day became the last page of my old life.

Hostilities have claimed innumerable aspects. But the toughest sacrifice of all is schooling, because it represents the forfeiture of tomorrow.

Now I dwell alongside my parents, two brothers and female sibling in a congested safe space in al-Mawasi. The tent walls flap in the wind, providing no climate control. We queue for nourishment and hydration. Electricity is a dream and personal space is absent. Optimism seems delicate.

At evening, I look up at the stars through the gaps of my shelter and question if my peers see the same sky. Some reach out when they can, stating they long for education and have preserved their former exercise books; like relics of a vanished time. I feel guilty because I’ve lost all of mine.

I once aspired to becoming a teacher to support local youth acquire knowledge, even when life was hard. Now I dream of being a writer – to compose, to communicate and to demonstrate the world what it represents to be a minor in the Strip. I want to tell our stories of anxiety and deprivation, but also fortitude. Because even here, amid loss and destruction, our expressions persist.

When connectivity is available, I attempt learning digitally. Other times, I go to a small tent where aid workers instruct us math and Arabic. The instruction is limited – the energy supply stops or the airstrikes begin again but in such times, I feel alive. I recollect who I was: the student who adored mathematics and poetry, who was convinced education could transform society.

The war has taken so much; our homes, educational institutions and relatives. I grieved for my family member, his spouse, and their offspring. I said goodbye to my beloved urban area, my previous home, which is only ruins now. But the hardest loss of all is learning, because it represents the forfeiture of tomorrow.

To the global audience, I express this: preserve our aspirations. We seek no sympathy, we want action. Young residents are entitled to texts, schools and security. Learning is not an extravagance, it is a basic right. This region is not just ruins; it is minors who still dream beneath the drones at evening. It is my story and I will persist in composing, even if all I have left is a broken pencil and a scrap of damaged material.

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

An educator, forty, teacher in al-Bureij camp

I have been teaching in Gaza for a substantial period. Initially in that urban area, then in a different town, and currently in al-Bureij camp in the middle of the territory. Before the war started, I regularly instructed six classes of about dozens of learners, hundreds of eager students keen on education.

Educating them was my mission and happiness in reality, and I still remember the twinkle in a student’s eyes when a knowledge was acquired; the kind of moment every teacher lives for.

I always believed instruction should be full of life. My teaching space was a zone of play, art, and activity. We painted maps, performed past occurrences, and transformed instruction into narratives.

Laughter always filled the room as curiosity displaced apprehension. Indeed, even in earlier times, local youth were always frightened. My learning environment was a secure location but after 7 October, the situation transformed.

My school became a refuge for households escaping the explosives. Not long later, it was attacked and totally demolished. There are hardly any learning institutions remaining intact in the region now. For 24 months, everything has been abnormal. The hostilities has shattered every aspect of our reality: security, homes, educational centers, hopes. Fear and grief are ever-present realities.

Numerous of my pupils are now lost – children who spoke of dreaming of physicians, painters, and educators. They were deprived even the privilege of living. Those who remain experience malnutrition, eviction and weariness – and nevertheless, they still hold onto the thirst for knowledge.

Occasionally, when the connectivity enables, I hear from a small number of them. They contact questioning: “Are you OK, instructor?” We communicate brief words, short lessons, minor flashes of contact amid the turmoil. They inquire if circumstances will ever go back to normal. I tell them I don’t know.

Throughout Gaza, teachers, aid workers and non-profits attempt instruction in any feasible location: in shelters, destroyed learning spaces, or packed refuges. Learning has become an gesture of resistance, a way to declare: “We are still here.” And provided that we persist in education, we will endure.

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