'The loss of education is the loss of the future itself': Palestinian Children and Educators on 24 Months Without Education.

'Our plea is for action, not compassion'.

Juwayriya Adwan, 12, Khan Younis

For the past 24 months since I entered a real classroom. Two years since I listened to the morning bell at Khawla Bint al-Azwar school, took my seat and participated actively during my beloved lesson. Sometimes I still vividly remember the familiar scents and noises: writing residue, pencil shavings, laughter echoing down the halls. But my educational institution is gone; it was struck soon after the war began. My books were burned, and some of my friends killed.

I was in elementary level on that fateful day: the last day I entered the school building. That beginning of the day, air raid sirens blared through the corridors. Some students wept, others gripped each other. Our educator attempted reassurance, but even she sounded shaky. I remember hoping for a routine day; lessons, recess, a literary performance. Instead, that day marked the end of my former reality.

Hostilities have claimed innumerable aspects. But the hardest loss of all is schooling, because it represents the forfeiture of tomorrow.

Now I reside with my guardians, siblings and female sibling in a packed refuge in this coastal area. The temporary partitions sway with breezes, providing no climate control. We line up for sustenance and drinks. Energy access is fantasy and personal space is absent. Hope feels fragile.

At evening, I observe the celestial bodies through the gaps of my temporary home and question if my peers see the same sky. Some message me when they manage, expressing they miss school and have preserved their previous journals; like valuables from a bygone era. I feel ashamed because I’ve misplaced all of mine.

I once dreamed of becoming a teacher to support young residents acquire knowledge, even when existence was challenging. Now I hope for being a journalist – to write, to talk and to reveal the world what it represents to be a young person in this region. I want to narrate our accounts of apprehension and need, but also fortitude. Because even in this place, amid loss and destruction, our voices refuse to be silent.

When there’s some internet, I try to study online. Other times, I go to a modest shelter where helpers instruct us mathematics and language. The sessions are brief – the power fails or the bombing resumes but in such times, I experience vitality. I recollect who I was: the student who adored mathematics and poetry, who thought knowledge could alter reality.

Hostilities have stolen countless aspects; our residences, schools and families. I mourned my family member, his partner, and their offspring. I said goodbye to my beautiful city, that southern city, which is merely debris now. But the most painful deprivation of all is education, because it represents the forfeiture of tomorrow.

To the world, I state this: preserve our aspirations. We seek no sympathy, we require steps. Gaza’s children deserve literature, schools and safety. Education is not optional, it is a basic right. The territory is not merely devastation; it is minors who still dream under aerial surveillance at darkness. It is my story and I will keep drafting, even if all I have left is a broken pencil and a piece of torn paper.

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

Naglaa Weshah, forty, teacher in a refugee camp

I have been instructing in Gaza for over ten years. First in a southern city, then in a different town, and now in this refugee settlement in the middle of the territory. Prior to hostilities, I used to teach several sets of about fourty pupils per class, hundreds of eager students eager to learn.

Teaching them was my vocation and delight in existence, and I still recall the twinkle in a learner's look when a new idea clicked; the kind of moment every instructor strives for.

I always was convinced education should be dynamic. My teaching space was a space of amusement, art, and activity. We painted maps, performed past occurrences, and turned lessons into stories.

Laughter always permeated the space as interest replaced apprehension. Certainly, even before the war, local youth were always afraid. My learning environment was a place of safety but after that day, the situation transformed.

My school became a shelter for households running from the explosives. Not long later, it was struck and totally demolished. There are hardly any schools left standing in this area now. For 24 months, everything has been abnormal. The conflict has broken every aspect of our reality: protection, homes, educational centers, dreams. Anxiety and sorrow are ever-present realities.

Numerous of my students are now deceased – children who mentioned dreaming of physicians, painters, and educators. They were refused even the entitlement to survival. Those who are still here live with starvation, relocation and exhaustion – and yet, they still hold onto the will to learn.

Occasionally, when the internet permits, I get in touch with a few of them. They write inquiring: “How are you, educator?” We exchange brief words, short lessons, minor flashes of interaction amid the chaos. They ask if situations will ever revert to standard. I inform them I have no answer.

Throughout this territory, teachers, aid workers and organizations endeavor education in all available spaces: in temporary structures, ruined educational areas, or packed refuges. Schooling has become an gesture of resistance, a way to say: “We are still here.” And as long as we persist in education, we will remain.

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