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'We don’t want pity, we want action'.

A young student, twelve, Khan Younis

For the past 24 months since I stepped into a real classroom. Two years since I heard the morning bell at Khawla Bint al-Azwar school, took my seat and answered questions during my preferred subject. Occasionally I still clearly recall the sounds and smells: chalk dust, pencil shavings, cheerful echoes. But my school no longer exists; it was targeted soon after the war began. My learning materials incinerated, and some of my friends killed.

I was in fifth grade on the seventh of October: the last day I entered the school building. That beginning of the day, alert signals screamed through the halls. Some students wept, others gripped each other. Our teacher tried to calm us, but even her tone wavered. I remember longing for a routine day; lessons, break time, a verse presentation. Instead, that day signaled the conclusion of my old life.

Hostilities have claimed innumerable aspects. But the most painful deprivation of all is schooling, because it represents the forfeiture of tomorrow.

Now I reside with my mother and father, male relatives and sister in a crowded shelter in Khan Younis. The temporary partitions sway with breezes, providing no climate control. We queue for sustenance and drinks. Electricity is a dream and seclusion is unavailable. Optimism seems delicate.

At evening, I look up at the stars through the openings of my temporary home and wonder if my friends see the identical heavens. Some contact me when they manage, saying they long for education and have preserved their previous journals; like treasures from a lost world. I feel remorseful because I’ve lost all of mine.

I once aspired to becoming a teacher to support local youth acquire knowledge, even when existence was challenging. Now I hope for being a reporter – to write, to speak and to show the world what it means to be a young person in this region. I want to tell our stories of fear and hunger, but also bravery. Because even here, amid fatality and debris, our voices refuse to be silent.

When connectivity is available, I try to study online. On other occasions, I visit a modest shelter where aid workers instruct us mathematics and language. The lessons are short – the electricity cuts out or the attacks recommence but in these instances, I experience vitality. I recollect who I was: the student who cherished arithmetic and verse, who believed knowledge could alter reality.

The war has taken so much; our residences, learning centers and relatives. I lost my paternal relative, his spouse, and their offspring. I said goodbye to my cherished hometown, Rafah, which is nothing but rubble now. But the most painful deprivation of all is education, because without it, our prospects disappear.

To the global audience, I state this: keep our hopes alive. We don’t want pity, we require steps. Gaza’s children are entitled to texts, learning environments and security. Learning is not optional, it is a essential privilege. This region is not just ruins; it is youth who persist in hoping beneath the drones at darkness. It is my narrative and I will continue writing, even if all I have left is a fractured utensil and a piece of torn paper.

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

An educator, forty, teacher in al-Bureij camp

I have been teaching 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 heart of the region. In pre-conflict times, I typically educated multiple groups of about 40 students each, nearly 240 young minds eager to learn.

Educating them was my vocation and delight in life, and I still recall the twinkle in a learner's look when a new idea clicked; the type of instance every educator lives for.

I always was convinced education should be vibrant. My learning environment was a zone of play, art, and motion. We created cartographic art, performed past occurrences, and turned lessons into stories.

Laughter always permeated the space as inquisitiveness displaced anxiety. Indeed, even in earlier times, children in Gaza were always frightened. My teaching space was a place of safety but after that day, all was altered.

My school became a shelter for relatives running from the bombs. Soon, it was targeted and totally demolished. There are almost no educational facilities left standing in this area now. For this period, everything has been abnormal. The hostilities has destroyed every facet of our reality: safety, dwellings, learning places, aspirations. Apprehension and mourning are perpetual experiences.

Many of my pupils are now dead – youth who spoke of becoming medical professionals, creatives, and instructors. They were denied even the entitlement to survival. Those who survive live with starvation, displacement and fatigue – and yet, they still cling to the will to learn.

Occasionally, when the online access allows, I get in touch with a few of them. They message questioning: “Are you safe, instructor?” We exchange brief words, abbreviated teaching, minor flashes of connection amid the disorder. They question if circumstances will ever revert to standard. I state to them I have no answer.

Throughout Gaza, teachers, helpers and charities attempt instruction wherever possible: in tents, damaged classrooms, or packed refuges. Schooling has become an gesture of resistance, a way to express: “Our presence continues.” And provided that we keep acquiring knowledge, we will remain.

Many of us are also caregivers. I am a guardian of {three|several