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'We don’t want pity, we want action'.

A young student, 12, Khan Younis

It has been 24 months since I was last inside a proper school. Two years since I heard the start-of-class signal at Khawla Bint al-Azwar school, occupied my place and answered questions during my favourite class. Sometimes I still clearly recall the auditory and olfactory sensations: writing residue, wooden scraps, joyful sounds in corridors. But my school no longer exists; it was struck soon after the hostilities erupted. My textbooks turned to ash, and several classmates lost.

I was in elementary level on the seventh of October: the final day I attended classes. That beginning of the day, warning alarms sounded through the halls. Some pupils sobbed, others clasped palms firmly. Our instructor sought to soothe, but even she sounded shaky. I remember longing for a normal day; instruction, recess, a poem recital. Instead, that day signaled the conclusion of my previous existence.

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

Now I live with my mother and father, two brothers and sister in a packed refuge in Khan Younis. The shelter coverings move with air currents, failing to insulate. We queue for sustenance and drinks. Power is imaginary and privacy doesn’t exist. Optimism seems delicate.

At evening, I gaze toward the night lights through the openings of my temporary home and question if my companions see the comparable vista. Some message me when they manage, expressing they long for education and have preserved their previous journals; like relics of a vanished time. I feel guilty because I’ve lost all of mine.

I once aspired to becoming a teacher to help local youth learn, even when life was hard. Now I aim for being a journalist – to draft, to talk and to show the world what it signifies to be a young person in the Strip. I want to narrate our accounts of anxiety and deprivation, but also fortitude. Because even in this place, amid death and ruins, our voices refuse to be silent.

When connectivity is available, I try to study online. Sometimes, I attend a small tent where helpers instruct us mathematics and language. The sessions are brief – the power fails or the bombing resumes but in such times, I feel alive. I recollect who I was: the young woman who adored mathematics and poetry, who thought learning could change the world.

Hostilities have stolen countless aspects; our homes, schools and relatives. I grieved for my paternal relative, his spouse, and their offspring. I forfeited my beautiful city, my previous home, which is nothing but rubble now. But the hardest loss of all is learning, because that is the loss of the future itself.

To the world, I express this: keep our hopes alive. Compassion isn't enough, we require steps. The youth are entitled to texts, schools and security. Education is not an extravagance, it is a essential privilege. Gaza is not just ruins; it is youth who continue to aspire amid unmanned aircraft at night. It is my story and I will persist in composing, even if the sole items remaining is a fractured utensil and a scrap of damaged material.

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

An educator, 40, teacher in al-Bureij camp

I have been educating in this area for more than a decade. Initially in that urban area, then in a different town, and now in the central camp in the middle of the territory. Before the war started, I regularly instructed six classes of about fourty pupils per class, almost two hundred forty individuals keen on education.

Teaching them was my purpose and joy in reality, and I still recall the twinkle in a learner's look when a new idea clicked; the sort of occasion every educator strives for.

I always thought education should be full of life. My classroom was a area of play, creativity, and activity. We created cartographic art, dramatized bygone episodes, and transformed instruction into narratives.

Laughter always permeated the space as interest replaced anxiety. Certainly, even before the war, children in Gaza were always frightened. My classroom was a place of safety but after the seventh, all was altered.

My school became a shelter for families escaping the explosives. Not long later, it was attacked and totally demolished. There are very few educational facilities still erect in this area now. For 24 months, nothing has been normal. The hostilities has shattered every facet of our reality: safety, dwellings, educational centers, dreams. Fear and grief are perpetual experiences.

A significant number of my learners are now lost – children who mentioned aspiring to be medical professionals, painters, and educators. They were denied even the entitlement to survival. Those who survive endure starvation, relocation and weariness – and however, they still maintain the thirst for knowledge.

Sometimes, when the online access enables, I hear from a small number of them. They message questioning: “How are you, instructor?” We share concise phrases, miniature instruction, small glimmers of connection amid the turmoil. They ask if things will ever go back to normal. I inform them I have no answer.

Throughout this territory, educators, volunteers and non-profits endeavor education in all available spaces: in shelters, damaged classrooms, or packed refuges. Schooling has become an demonstration of perseverance, a way to express: “Our presence continues.” And provided that we keep acquiring knowledge, we will persist.

Numerous of us are also guardians. I am a mother of {three|several