🔗 Share this article

'We don’t want pity, we want action'.

A young student, twelve, a temporary shelter

It has been two years since I entered a learning environment. That long since I listened to the morning bell at Khawla Bint al-Azwar school, sat at my desk and participated actively during my beloved lesson. Sometimes I still vividly remember the familiar scents and noises: writing residue, wooden scraps, laughter echoing down the halls. But my educational institution is gone; it was bombed shortly after the war began. My learning materials incinerated, and some of my friends killed.

I was in fifth grade on that fateful day: the concluding day I entered the school building. That morning, warning alarms screamed through the passageways. Some children cried, others clasped palms firmly. Our teacher tried to calm us, but even her tone wavered. I remember hoping for a routine day; teaching, break time, a literary performance. Instead, that day marked the end of my previous existence.

Conflict has stolen countless things. But the hardest loss of all is education, because that is the loss of the future itself.

Now I dwell alongside my guardians, two brothers and sister in a congested safe space in this coastal area. The shelter coverings sway with breezes, providing no climate control. We queue for water and food. Power is imaginary and privacy doesn’t exist. Optimism seems delicate.

At night, I observe the celestial bodies through the openings of my tent and ponder if my friends see the same sky. Some message me when they manage, stating they yearn for classes and have kept their former exercise books; like valuables from a bygone era. I feel remorseful because I’ve misplaced all of mine.

I once aspired to becoming a teacher to assist Gaza’s children study, even when circumstances were difficult. Now I hope for being a reporter – to draft, to talk and to show the world what it signifies to be a young person in the Strip. I want to narrate our accounts of fear and hunger, but also bravery. Because even in this place, amid death and ruins, our expressions persist.

When there’s some internet, I try to study via the web. Other times, I go to a small tent where aid workers instruct us mathematics and language. The lessons are short – the energy supply stops or the attacks recommence but in these instances, I experience vitality. I recollect who I was: the student who adored mathematics and poetry, who believed education could transform society.

Conflict has claimed innumerable things; our homes, learning centers and kin. I lost my family member, his wife, and their offspring. I said goodbye to my beloved urban area, my previous home, which is only ruins now. But the most painful deprivation of all is learning, because without it, our prospects disappear.

To the global audience, I express this: don’t let our dreams die. Compassion isn't enough, we demand measures. The youth deserve books, learning environments and protection. Education is not optional, it is a basic right. This region is not only destruction; it is minors who persist in hoping amid unmanned aircraft at darkness. It is my story and I will continue writing, even if my only possessions is a fractured utensil and a scrap of damaged material.

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

An educator, forty, teacher in a refugee camp

I have been educating in the region for more than a decade. First in Khan Younis, then in Deir al-Balah, and presently in this refugee settlement in the middle of the territory. Before the war started, I used to teach several sets of about 40 students each, almost two hundred forty individuals keen on education.

Teaching them was my mission and happiness in existence, and I still recollect the gleam in a pupil's gaze when a knowledge was acquired; the sort of occasion every instructor cherishes.

I always thought instruction should be dynamic. My learning environment was a zone of amusement, aesthetics, and movement. We painted maps, acted out historical events, and converted teaching into tales.

Merriment always permeated the space as inquisitiveness displaced fear. Indeed, even prior to conflict, local youth were always frightened. My learning environment was a protected zone but after the seventh, the situation transformed.

My learning center became a shelter for households running from the explosives. Not long later, it was attacked and totally demolished. There are hardly any learning institutions still erect in this area now. For two years, nothing has been normal. The conflict has shattered every facet of our lives: security, homes, schools, aspirations. Anxiety and sorrow are ever-present realities.

Many of my students are now lost – youth who spoke of aspiring to be physicians, creatives, and educators. They were deprived even the entitlement to survival. Those who are still here live with malnutrition, eviction and fatigue – and nevertheless, they still maintain the desire for education.

Sometimes, when the connectivity enables, I receive messages from a handful of them. They write asking: “Are you safe, instructor?” We exchange brief words, short lessons, tiny sparks of contact amid the disorder. They ask if circumstances will ever return to usual. I inform them I am uncertain.

Throughout this territory, educators, aid workers and organizations endeavor education in all available spaces: in shelters, ruined educational areas, or congested safe zones. Schooling has become an gesture of resistance, a way to declare: “We persist.” And as long as we keep acquiring knowledge, we will endure.

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