'When education is lost, the future vanishes': Gaza's Children and Educators on 24 Months Without Education.

'We don’t want pity, we want action'.

Juwayriya Adwan, twelve, a temporary shelter

For the past 24 months since I was last inside a real classroom. That long since I listened to the morning bell at Khawla Bint al-Azwar school, took my seat and raised my hand during my preferred subject. At times I still vividly remember the familiar scents and noises: chalk dust, sharpener leftovers, laughter echoing down the halls. But my learning place was destroyed; it was struck soon after the conflict started. My learning materials incinerated, and some of my friends killed.

I was in the fifth year on 7 October: the concluding day I went to school. That beginning of the day, warning alarms sounded through the halls. Some students wept, others gripped each other. Our instructor sought to soothe, but even her tone wavered. I remember longing for a ordinary day; teaching, intermission, a poem recital. Instead, that day signaled the conclusion of my former reality.

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

Now I dwell alongside my guardians, male relatives and female sibling in a crowded shelter in Khan Younis. The temporary partitions flap in the wind, failing to insulate. We queue for water and food. Power is imaginary and personal space is absent. Hope feels fragile.

At night, I gaze toward the celestial bodies through the holes of my tent and ponder if my companions see the same sky. Some message me when they can, stating they yearn for classes and have retained their old notebooks; 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 study, even when life was hard. Now I hope for being a writer – to write, to speak and to demonstrate the world what it represents to be a child in Gaza. I want to narrate our accounts of anxiety and deprivation, but also courage. Because even in this place, amid loss and destruction, our words continue.

When connectivity is available, I attempt learning via the web. Sometimes, I visit a modest shelter where volunteers educate us arithmetic and Arabic. The sessions are brief – the energy supply stops or the airstrikes begin again but in these instances, I feel alive. I recollect who I was: the girl who cherished arithmetic and verse, who thought education could transform society.

Conflict has claimed innumerable things; our homes, educational institutions and kin. I mourned my uncle, his partner, and their offspring. I said goodbye to my beautiful city, Rafah, which is nothing but rubble now. But the toughest sacrifice 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. The youth deserve texts, learning environments and security. Education is not an extravagance, it is a fundamental entitlement. This region is not only destruction; it is minors who persist in hoping beneath the drones at evening. It is my account and I will persist in composing, even if the sole items remaining is a fractured utensil and a piece of torn paper.

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

Naglaa Weshah, 40, instructor in central Gaza

I have been teaching in Gaza for over ten years. Originally in Khan Younis, then in another location, and presently in the central camp in the central Gaza Strip. In pre-conflict times, I typically educated multiple groups of about fourty pupils per class, almost two hundred forty individuals enthusiastic about knowledge.

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

I always believed instruction should be dynamic. My teaching space was a zone of amusement, creativity, and activity. We created cartographic art, performed past occurrences, and transformed instruction into narratives.

Joy always occupied the area as interest displaced fear. Yes, even in earlier times, local youth were always afraid. My learning environment was a secure location but after that day, all was altered.

My learning center became a safe haven for families fleeing the explosives. Soon, it was targeted and totally demolished. There are very few educational facilities left standing in this area now. For two years, everything has been abnormal. The conflict has broken every aspect of our reality: security, homes, educational centers, aspirations. Apprehension and mourning are constant companions.

Many of my pupils are now lost – minors who mentioned aspiring to be doctors, artists, and instructors. They were deprived even the entitlement to survival. Those who remain live with starvation, relocation and exhaustion – and yet, they still cling to the thirst for knowledge.

Occasionally, when the online access allows, I hear from a few of them. They write inquiring: “How are you, educator?” We share concise phrases, abbreviated teaching, small glimmers of connection amid the disorder. They question if circumstances will ever revert to standard. I inform them I don’t know.

Throughout Gaza, instructors, helpers and non-profits endeavor education wherever possible: in temporary structures, damaged classrooms, or crowded shelters. Learning has become an act of defiance, a way to declare: “We persist.” And so long as we persist in education, we will persist.

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