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'We don’t want pity, we want action'.

A young student, twelve, a temporary shelter

For the past two years since I was last inside a learning environment. Two years since I listened to the morning bell at my former school, took my seat and participated actively during my favourite class. Sometimes I still clearly recall the sounds and smells: powder from the board, sharpener leftovers, laughter echoing down the halls. But my learning place was destroyed; it was bombed shortly after the hostilities erupted. My learning materials incinerated, and companions perished.

I was in elementary level on that fateful day: the final day I attended classes. That beginning of the day, warning alarms sounded through the passageways. Some pupils sobbed, others clasped palms firmly. Our teacher tried to calm us, but even her tone wavered. I remember wishing for a ordinary day; teaching, intermission, a poem recital. Instead, that day signaled the conclusion of my old life.

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

Now I reside with my guardians, two brothers and sister in a congested safe space in Khan Younis. The shelter coverings flap in the wind, providing no climate control. We queue for sustenance and drinks. Electricity is a dream and personal space is absent. Aspiration appears brittle.

At evening, I look up at the night lights through the openings of my temporary home and question if my companions see the same sky. Some reach out when they manage, expressing they yearn for classes and have preserved their previous journals; like valuables from a bygone era. I feel remorseful because I’ve misplaced all of mine.

I once aspired to entering the education field to assist Gaza’s children study, even when life was hard. Now I hope for being a journalist – to compose, to talk and to show the world what it represents to be a young person in the Strip. I want to share our experiences of fear and hunger, but also bravery. Because even here, amid fatality and debris, our words continue.

When there’s some internet, I endeavor to educate myself online. Sometimes, I go to a small tent where helpers teach us mathematics and language. The lessons are short – the electricity cuts out or the bombing resumes but in such times, I feel alive. I remember who I was: the girl who cherished arithmetic and verse, who thought learning could change the world.

The war has taken so much; our residences, learning centers and kin. I grieved for my uncle, his wife, and their young ones. I forfeited my beautiful city, that southern city, which is only ruins now. But the most painful deprivation of all is education, because that is the loss of the future itself.

To the global audience, I say this: keep our hopes alive. Compassion isn't enough, we want action. Gaza’s children deserve literature, learning environments and safety. Schooling is not a luxury, it is a fundamental entitlement. This region is not only destruction; it is youth who persist in hoping under aerial surveillance at evening. It is my story and I will persist in composing, even if the sole items remaining is a broken pencil and a scrap of damaged material.

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

An educator, forty, teacher in central Gaza

I have been teaching in the region for a substantial period. Initially in Khan Younis, then in Deir al-Balah, and presently in this refugee settlement in the heart of the region. Prior to hostilities, I typically educated multiple groups of about fourty pupils per class, almost two hundred forty individuals keen on education.

Educating them was my mission and happiness in existence, and I still remember the gleam in a pupil's gaze when a new idea clicked; the sort of occasion every teacher cherishes.

I always believed instruction should be vibrant. My classroom was a area of play, art, and motion. We painted maps, performed past occurrences, and transformed instruction into narratives.

Merriment always filled the room as curiosity substituted fear. Indeed, even prior to conflict, young residents were always scared. My learning environment was a secure location but after that day, the situation transformed.

My educational institution became a safe haven for households running from the aerial attacks. Not long later, it was struck and completely destroyed. There are hardly any schools left standing in Gaza now. For 24 months, everything has been abnormal. The hostilities has broken every facet of our existence: safety, dwellings, educational centers, dreams. Apprehension and mourning are ever-present realities.

Many of my students are now lost – youth who spoke of dreaming of medical professionals, creatives, and educators. They were refused even the entitlement to survival. Those who remain experience starvation, displacement and weariness – and yet, they still cling to the will to learn.

At times, when the online access allows, I receive messages from a small number of them. They message asking: “Are you safe, teacher?” We exchange short messages, abbreviated teaching, minor flashes of contact amid the disorder. They ask if things will ever return to usual. I state to them I don’t know.

Across Gaza, instructors, volunteers and charities attempt instruction wherever possible: in temporary structures, ruined educational areas, or crowded shelters. Education has become an demonstration of perseverance, a way to say: “We persist.” And as long as we keep acquiring knowledge, we will remain.

A significant number of us are also parents. I am a guardian of {three|several