Juwayriya Adwan, 12, a temporary shelter
For the past 24 months since I stepped into a learning environment. Two years since I listened to the school chime at Khawla Bint al-Azwar school, occupied my place and answered questions during my favourite class. Sometimes I still vividly remember the familiar scents and noises: powder from the board, pencil shavings, laughter echoing down the halls. But my educational institution is gone; it was struck not long after the war began. My textbooks turned to ash, and several classmates lost.
I was in fifth grade on that fateful day: the last day I entered the school building. That early hours, alert signals blared through the halls. Some pupils sobbed, others gripped each other. Our educator attempted reassurance, but even her voice trembled. I remember hoping for a routine day; instruction, break time, a verse presentation. Instead, that day signaled the conclusion of my old life.
The war has taken so much. But the hardest loss of all is education, because without it, our prospects disappear.
Now I reside with my mother and father, siblings and female sibling in a packed refuge in this coastal area. The tent walls move with air currents, providing no climate control. We queue for sustenance and drinks. Power is imaginary and personal space is absent. Hope feels fragile.
At night, I look up at the celestial bodies through the openings of my shelter and wonder if my friends see the comparable vista. Some message me when they manage, saying they yearn for classes and have preserved their previous journals; like treasures from a lost world. I feel remorseful because I’ve lost all of mine.
I once dreamed of pursuing pedagogy to assist young residents acquire knowledge, even when circumstances were difficult. Now I dream of being a reporter – to draft, to talk and to reveal the world what it means to be a child in the Strip. I want to narrate our accounts of fear and hunger, but also fortitude. Because even here, amid loss and destruction, our expressions persist.
When there’s some internet, I attempt learning online. Sometimes, I visit a small tent where aid workers instruct us math and Arabic. The sessions are brief – the electricity cuts out or the attacks recommence but in these instances, I sense being. I recall who I was: the student who loved numbers and poems, who believed learning could change the world.
The war has taken so much; our dwellings, schools and families. I lost my paternal relative, his spouse, and their young ones. I said goodbye to my cherished hometown, my previous home, which is only ruins now. But the hardest loss of all is schooling, because it represents the forfeiture of tomorrow.
To the global audience, I state this: don’t let our dreams die. We seek no sympathy, we demand measures. Gaza’s children deserve books, learning environments and protection. Learning is not optional, it is a essential privilege. Gaza is not just ruins; it is youth who persist in hoping amid unmanned aircraft at night. It is my story and I will continue writing, even if the sole items remaining is a broken pencil and a piece of torn paper.
Naglaa Weshah, forty, instructor in al-Bureij camp
I have been instructing in this area for a substantial period. Originally in a southern city, then in a different town, and now in al-Bureij camp in the heart of the region. In pre-conflict times, I used to teach six classes of about 40 students each, almost two hundred forty individuals keen on education.
Teaching them was my vocation and delight in reality, and I still recollect the sparkle in a student’s eyes when a concept was understood; the type of instance every teacher lives for.
I always believed learning should be dynamic. My teaching space was a zone of amusement, aesthetics, and movement. We created cartographic art, dramatized bygone episodes, and converted teaching into tales.
Merriment always occupied the area as interest replaced anxiety. Indeed, even prior to conflict, children in Gaza were always scared. My teaching space was a secure location but after the seventh, the situation transformed.
My school became a shelter for relatives running from the bombs. Shortly after, it was targeted and totally demolished. There are hardly any educational facilities still erect in this area now. For 24 months, nothing has been normal. The conflict has shattered every facet of our reality: security, dwellings, schools, aspirations. Fear and grief are constant companions.
Numerous of my students are now lost – youth who spoke of becoming physicians, painters, and educators. They were deprived even the privilege of living. Those who remain live with malnutrition, eviction and weariness – and however, they still cling to the thirst for knowledge.
Occasionally, when the online access permits, I get in touch with a few of them. They contact inquiring: “How are you, teacher?” We exchange concise phrases, abbreviated teaching, small glimmers of contact amid the turmoil. They ask if circumstances will ever return to usual. I inform them I don’t know.
Across Gaza, instructors, volunteers and non-profits try to teach wherever possible: in temporary structures, ruined educational areas, or congested safe zones. Education has become an act of defiance, a way to express: “We persist.” And provided that we persist in education, we will persist.
A significant number of us are also parents. I am a parent of {three|several
A tech strategist with over a decade of experience in digital transformation and AI-driven solutions across European markets.