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'We seek action, not sympathy'.

A young student, twelve, a temporary shelter

It has been two years since I stepped into a proper school. That long since I listened to the start-of-class signal at my former school, occupied my place and participated actively during my beloved lesson. Sometimes I still clearly recall the familiar scents and noises: powder from the board, wooden scraps, laughter echoing down the halls. But my educational institution is gone; it was struck shortly after the conflict started. My books were burned, and companions perished.

I was in fifth grade on that fateful day: the final day I went to school. That early hours, warning alarms sounded through the corridors. Some children cried, others clasped palms firmly. Our teacher tried to calm us, but even she sounded shaky. I remember hoping for a routine day; lessons, intermission, a literary performance. Instead, that day marked the end of my former reality.

Hostilities have claimed innumerable aspects. But the most painful deprivation of all is learning, because that is the loss of the future itself.

Now I dwell alongside my mother and father, siblings and sister in a congested safe space in Khan Younis. The shelter coverings flap in the wind, keeping neither cold nor heat away. We line up for nourishment and hydration. Power is imaginary and privacy doesn’t exist. Hope feels fragile.

At darkness, I look up at the celestial bodies through the gaps of my tent and wonder if my friends see the identical heavens. Some reach out when they manage, saying they yearn for classes and have preserved their former exercise books; like treasures from a lost world. I feel ashamed because I’ve forfeited all of mine.

I once envisioned becoming a teacher to help young residents study, even when circumstances were difficult. Now I dream of being a journalist – to write, to speak and to demonstrate the world what it represents to be a young person in Gaza. I want to tell our stories of anxiety and deprivation, but also fortitude. Because even amid these conditions, amid fatality and debris, our words continue.

When connectivity is available, I try to study digitally. On other occasions, I attend a tiny space where volunteers instruct us arithmetic and Arabic. The sessions are brief – the power fails or the bombing resumes but in those moments, I feel alive. I recollect who I was: the girl who loved numbers and poems, who believed education could transform society.

Hostilities have stolen countless aspects; our residences, learning centers and relatives. I lost my family member, his partner, and their children. I said goodbye to my beautiful city, my previous home, which is nothing but rubble now. But the hardest loss of all is schooling, because that is the loss of the future itself.

To the international community, I express this: preserve our aspirations. We don’t want pity, we demand measures. Gaza’s children merit books, learning environments and protection. Education is not an extravagance, it is a essential privilege. This region is not just ruins; it is youth who still dream beneath the drones at evening. It is my story and I will persist in composing, even if the sole items remaining is a fractured utensil and a fragment of ripped sheet.

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

An educator, forty, instructor in al-Bureij camp

I have been educating in the region for over ten years. Originally in Khan Younis, then in Deir al-Balah, and currently in al-Bureij camp in the central Gaza Strip. Before the war started, I regularly instructed several sets of about dozens of learners, almost two hundred forty individuals enthusiastic about knowledge.

Educating them was my purpose and joy in existence, and I still recall the sparkle in a learner's look when a new idea clicked; the kind of moment every teacher strives for.

I always was convinced learning should be vibrant. My classroom was a zone of play, aesthetics, and activity. We painted maps, performed past occurrences, and converted teaching into tales.

Laughter always occupied the area as inquisitiveness substituted fear. Indeed, even before the war, young residents were always scared. My teaching space was a place of safety but after 7 October, everything changed.

My school became a shelter for families running from the bombs. Soon, it was attacked and totally demolished. There are hardly any schools left standing in this area now. For this period, nothing has been normal. The war has shattered every facet of our existence: protection, homes, learning places, hopes. Anxiety and sorrow are perpetual experiences.

Many of my students are now dead – children who spoke of aspiring to be physicians, painters, and educators. They were refused even the entitlement to survival. Those who remain live with malnutrition, eviction and exhaustion – and however, they still maintain the thirst for knowledge.

Sometimes, when the internet allows, I receive messages from a few of them. They write asking: “Are you safe, educator?” We communicate short messages, abbreviated teaching, minor flashes of contact amid the chaos. They ask if things will ever return to usual. I state to them I am uncertain.

Across Gaza, educators, helpers and non-profits attempt instruction in all available spaces: in tents, damaged classrooms, or packed refuges. Learning has become an gesture of resistance, a way to say: “We are still here.” And provided that we keep acquiring knowledge, we will endure.

A significant number of us are also caregivers. I am a mother of {three|several