'When education is lost, the future vanishes': Gaza's Youth and Teachers on 24 Months Deprived of Education.

'Our plea is for action, not compassion'.

Juwayriya Adwan, twelve, Khan Younis

It has been 24 months since I entered a real classroom. Two years since I heard the school chime at my former school, sat at my desk and raised my hand during my favourite class. Occasionally I still vividly remember the familiar scents and noises: writing residue, pencil shavings, laughter echoing down the halls. But my learning place was destroyed; it was bombed soon after the hostilities erupted. My learning materials incinerated, and companions perished.

I was in the fifth year on the seventh of October: the final day I entered the school building. That beginning of the day, air raid sirens sounded through the corridors. Some pupils sobbed, others clasped palms firmly. Our teacher tried to calm us, but even her voice trembled. I remember longing for a normal day; lessons, recess, a poem recital. Instead, that day marked the end of my previous existence.

The war has taken so much. But the hardest loss of all is schooling, because that is the loss of the future itself.

Now I dwell alongside my parents, two brothers and sister in a packed refuge in al-Mawasi. The temporary partitions flap in the wind, keeping neither cold nor heat away. We queue for sustenance and drinks. Energy access is fantasy and seclusion is unavailable. Optimism seems delicate.

At darkness, I look up at the stars through the holes of my shelter and wonder if my companions see the comparable vista. Some contact me when they manage, expressing they yearn for classes and have preserved their former exercise books; like relics of a vanished time. I feel remorseful because I’ve forfeited all of mine.

I once dreamed of entering the education field to help local youth acquire knowledge, even when existence was challenging. Now I hope for being a writer – to write, to communicate and to demonstrate the world what it represents to be a young person in Gaza. I want to share our experiences of fear and hunger, but also fortitude. Because even in this place, amid fatality and debris, our words continue.

When connectivity is available, I endeavor to educate myself digitally. Other times, I go to a small tent where aid workers educate us math and Arabic. The instruction is limited – the electricity cuts out or the bombing resumes but in such times, I sense being. I remember who I was: the student who cherished arithmetic and verse, who believed knowledge could alter reality.

Hostilities have stolen countless aspects; our homes, schools and families. I grieved for my family member, his wife, and their young ones. I said goodbye to my cherished hometown, that southern city, which is nothing but rubble now. But the hardest loss of all is schooling, because it represents the forfeiture of tomorrow.

To the global audience, I state this: preserve our aspirations. Compassion isn't enough, we demand measures. The youth are entitled to literature, learning environments and security. Education is not an extravagance, it is a essential privilege. Gaza is not merely devastation; it is minors who persist in hoping under aerial surveillance at evening. It is my story and I will persist in composing, even if all I have left is a broken pencil and a fragment of ripped sheet.

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

An educator, forty, teacher in a refugee camp

I have been instructing in Gaza for over ten years. First in Khan Younis, then in Deir al-Balah, and now in al-Bureij camp in the heart of the region. In pre-conflict times, I used to teach several sets of about 40 students each, almost two hundred forty individuals enthusiastic about knowledge.

Instructing them was my vocation and delight in existence, and I still recollect the gleam in a learner's look when a knowledge was acquired; the kind of moment every teacher strives for.

I always was convinced instruction should be vibrant. My classroom was a space of recreation, art, and movement. We created cartographic art, dramatized bygone episodes, and converted teaching into tales.

Merriment always permeated the space as inquisitiveness substituted anxiety. Certainly, even before the war, young residents were always scared. My learning environment was a secure location but after 7 October, everything changed.

My school became a safe haven for households escaping the bombs. Shortly after, it was struck and completely destroyed. There are hardly any educational facilities remaining intact in Gaza now. For 24 months, nothing has been normal. The hostilities has destroyed every facet of our existence: protection, residences, schools, aspirations. Fear and grief are constant companions.

A significant number of my students are now lost – children who mentioned becoming doctors, painters, and educators. They were deprived even the right to exist. Those who remain endure starvation, displacement and fatigue – and however, they still hold onto the will to learn.

Occasionally, when the online access allows, I get in touch with a handful of them. They write asking: “Are you OK, instructor?” We communicate short messages, abbreviated teaching, tiny sparks of connection amid the chaos. They ask if things will ever revert to standard. I state to them I don’t know.

Throughout the region, teachers, aid workers and non-profits attempt instruction in any feasible location: in tents, ruined educational areas, or crowded shelters. Schooling has become an act of defiance, a way to declare: “We are still here.” And provided that we continue learning, we will persist.

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