'The loss of education is the loss of the future itself': Gaza's Youth and Teachers on Two Years Deprived of School.

'Our plea is for action, not compassion'.

A young student, 12, Khan Younis

It has been two years since I stepped into a proper school. That long since I heard the start-of-class signal at Khawla Bint al-Azwar school, occupied my place and participated actively during my favourite class. Occasionally I still distinctly recollect the auditory and olfactory sensations: powder from the board, pencil shavings, cheerful echoes. But my educational institution is gone; it was bombed shortly after the war began. My books were burned, and some of my friends killed.

I was in elementary level on 7 October: the final day I entered the school building. That morning, alert signals sounded through the halls. Some students wept, others gripped each other. Our teacher tried to calm us, but even she sounded shaky. I remember hoping for a ordinary day; instruction, break time, a literary performance. Instead, that day marked the end of my previous existence.

The war has taken so much. But the hardest loss of all is learning, because without it, our prospects disappear.

Now I dwell alongside my mother and father, siblings and female sibling in a congested safe space in this coastal area. The temporary partitions flap in the wind, failing to insulate. We line up for nourishment and hydration. Energy access is fantasy and privacy doesn’t exist. Aspiration appears brittle.

At evening, I look up at the night lights through the holes of my shelter and question if my friends see the same sky. Some message me when they manage, stating they miss school and have preserved their previous journals; like relics of a vanished time. I feel ashamed because I’ve lost all of mine.

I once dreamed of pursuing pedagogy to help local youth learn, even when existence was challenging. Now I dream of being a journalist – to compose, to speak and to reveal the world what it means to be a minor in Gaza. I want to narrate our accounts of anxiety and deprivation, but also fortitude. Because even in this place, amid fatality and debris, our voices refuse to be silent.

When online access exists, I endeavor to educate myself digitally. Other times, I attend a modest shelter where volunteers educate us arithmetic and Arabic. The instruction is limited – the energy supply stops or the airstrikes begin again but in those moments, I experience vitality. I recollect who I was: the student who loved numbers and poems, who thought knowledge could alter reality.

Hostilities have stolen countless aspects; our dwellings, schools and kin. I lost my uncle, his spouse, and their children. I lost my beautiful city, Rafah, which is merely debris now. But the toughest sacrifice of all is schooling, because without it, our prospects disappear.

To the global audience, I express this: preserve our aspirations. We seek no sympathy, we require steps. Young residents are entitled to texts, educational facilities and protection. Learning is not optional, it is a fundamental entitlement. The territory is not only destruction; it is children who persist in hoping amid unmanned aircraft at night. It is my story and I will keep drafting, even if all I have left is a broken pencil and a scrap of damaged material.

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

An educator, 40, teacher in al-Bureij camp

I have been teaching in the region for more than a decade. Initially in Khan Younis, then in Deir al-Balah, and now in al-Bureij camp in the middle of the territory. In pre-conflict times, I regularly instructed several sets of about dozens of learners, nearly 240 young minds eager to learn.

Instructing them was my mission and happiness in existence, and I still recall the twinkle in a learner's look when a new idea clicked; the type of instance every teacher strives for.

I always believed learning should be dynamic. My teaching space was a zone of amusement, creativity, and movement. We created cartographic art, performed past occurrences, and turned lessons into stories.

Merriment always filled the room as inquisitiveness displaced anxiety. Yes, even prior to conflict, children in Gaza were always frightened. My teaching space was a protected zone but after that day, all was altered.

My educational institution became a refuge for families escaping the aerial attacks. Soon, it was attacked and entirely ruined. There are hardly any learning institutions still erect in Gaza now. For this period, nothing has been normal. The war has shattered every facet of our existence: security, dwellings, educational centers, hopes. Fear and grief are perpetual experiences.

A significant number of my pupils are now dead – minors who spoke of becoming physicians, painters, and teachers. They were deprived even the privilege of living. Those who are still here endure hunger, eviction and fatigue – and yet, they still maintain the desire for education.

Occasionally, when the online access allows, I get in touch with a handful of them. They write inquiring: “How are you, instructor?” We communicate brief words, short lessons, small glimmers of interaction amid the disorder. They question if circumstances will ever go back to normal. I inform them I have no answer.

Across Gaza, educators, volunteers and non-profits attempt instruction in all available spaces: in temporary structures, ruined educational areas, or crowded shelters. Education has become an demonstration of perseverance, a way to declare: “Our presence continues.” And so long as we keep acquiring knowledge, we will endure.

Many of us are also parents. I am a mother of {three|several