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'Our plea is for action, not compassion'.

A young student, 12, a temporary shelter

It has been 24 months since I was last inside a proper school. That long since I listened to the school chime at Khawla Bint al-Azwar school, took my seat and participated actively during my favourite class. Occasionally I still clearly recall the familiar scents and noises: writing residue, pencil shavings, cheerful echoes. But my school no longer exists; it was bombed not long after the hostilities erupted. My textbooks turned to ash, and some of my friends killed.

I was in fifth grade on the seventh of October: the last day I attended classes. That early hours, warning alarms blared through the passageways. Some pupils sobbed, others held hands tightly. Our educator attempted reassurance, but even her tone wavered. I remember longing for a routine day; instruction, break time, a literary performance. Instead, that day became the last page of my old life.

Conflict has stolen countless things. But the hardest loss of all is education, because it represents the forfeiture of tomorrow.

Now I reside with my guardians, male relatives and female sibling in a packed refuge in Khan Younis. The shelter coverings move with air currents, keeping neither cold nor heat away. We line up for sustenance and drinks. Energy access is fantasy and seclusion is unavailable. Hope feels fragile.

At darkness, I look up at the stars through the gaps of my shelter and question if my peers see the comparable vista. Some message me when they can, saying they yearn for classes and have retained their old notebooks; like treasures from a lost world. I feel remorseful because I’ve forfeited all of mine.

I once aspired to pursuing pedagogy to assist local youth study, even when circumstances were difficult. Now I hope for being a journalist – to write, to speak and to show the world what it signifies to be a child in this region. I want to narrate our accounts of fear and hunger, but also courage. Because even in this place, amid fatality and debris, our expressions persist.

When online access exists, I try to study digitally. On other occasions, I visit a tiny space where volunteers educate us mathematics and language. The instruction is limited – the electricity cuts out or the attacks recommence but in these instances, I feel alive. I remember who I was: the girl who loved numbers and poems, who thought education could transform society.

The war has taken so much; our residences, educational institutions and families. I mourned my uncle, his wife, and their young ones. I forfeited my beautiful city, Rafah, which is only ruins now. But the most painful deprivation of all is schooling, because that is the loss of the future itself.

To the international community, I express this: keep our hopes alive. We don’t want pity, we demand measures. Gaza’s children deserve books, learning environments and safety. Schooling is not a luxury, it is a basic right. Gaza is not just ruins; it is children who persist in hoping beneath the drones at night. It is my narrative and I will keep drafting, even if all I have left is a broken pencil and a piece of torn paper.

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

An educator, forty, instructor in central Gaza

I have been educating in this area for a substantial period. Initially in that urban area, then in a different town, and presently in the central camp in the heart of the region. In pre-conflict times, I regularly instructed several sets of about 40 students each, almost two hundred forty individuals keen on education.

Teaching them was my vocation and delight in reality, and I still remember the twinkle in a student’s eyes when a new idea clicked; the type of instance every educator strives for.

I always was convinced education should be full of life. My learning environment was a space of recreation, creativity, and movement. We created cartographic art, performed past occurrences, and converted teaching into tales.

Laughter always filled the room as interest displaced fear. Indeed, even in earlier times, young residents were always afraid. My teaching space was a protected zone but after that day, the situation transformed.

My educational institution became a refuge for families escaping the explosives. Shortly after, it was targeted and entirely ruined. There are almost no learning institutions remaining intact in this area now. For 24 months, all has been unusual. The hostilities has destroyed every aspect of our existence: protection, residences, learning places, hopes. Apprehension and mourning are perpetual experiences.

A significant number of my students are now lost – children who spoke of aspiring to be doctors, creatives, and teachers. They were deprived even the privilege of living. Those who survive live with malnutrition, displacement and exhaustion – and nevertheless, they still maintain the will to learn.

At times, when the connectivity permits, I hear from a handful of them. They message inquiring: “Are you OK, instructor?” We communicate brief words, abbreviated teaching, small glimmers of interaction amid the turmoil. They question if circumstances will ever return to usual. I tell them I am uncertain.

Across the region, instructors, helpers and organizations endeavor education in all available spaces: in temporary structures, damaged classrooms, or packed refuges. Education has become an gesture of resistance, a way to declare: “We persist.” And so long as we persist in education, we will endure.

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