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

'We don’t want pity, we want action'.

A young student, twelve, al-Mawasi

It has been two years since I stepped into a real classroom. Two years since I heard the start-of-class signal at Khawla Bint al-Azwar school, sat at my desk and participated actively during my beloved lesson. Occasionally I still vividly remember the sounds and smells: powder from the board, pencil shavings, cheerful echoes. But my learning place was destroyed; it was targeted soon after the war began. My learning materials incinerated, and some of my friends killed.

I was in fifth grade on that fateful day: the final day I entered the school building. That beginning of the day, air raid sirens blared through the halls. Some children cried, others clasped palms firmly. Our teacher tried to calm us, but even her voice trembled. I remember hoping for a normal day; instruction, break time, a poem recital. Instead, that day became the last page of my previous existence.

Conflict has stolen countless things. But the hardest loss of all is schooling, because without it, our prospects disappear.

Now I dwell alongside my guardians, two brothers and female sibling in a crowded shelter in this coastal area. The shelter coverings move with air currents, keeping neither cold nor heat away. We wait in line for nourishment and hydration. Electricity is a dream and privacy doesn’t exist. Optimism seems delicate.

At night, I look up at the night lights through the openings of my shelter and wonder if my peers see the same sky. Some reach out when they can, expressing they yearn for classes and have preserved their old notebooks; like treasures from a lost world. I feel guilty because I’ve lost all of mine.

I once aspired to becoming a teacher to support young residents study, even when circumstances were difficult. Now I aim for being a journalist – to write, to communicate and to demonstrate the world what it represents to be a minor in Gaza. I want to tell our stories of anxiety and deprivation, but also fortitude. Because even amid these conditions, amid loss and destruction, our expressions persist.

When connectivity is available, I try to study via the web. Other times, I go to a small tent where aid workers teach us math and Arabic. The lessons are short – the power fails or the bombing resumes but in those moments, I feel alive. I remember who I was: the student who cherished arithmetic and verse, who thought learning could change the world.

Conflict has claimed innumerable things; our homes, schools and relatives. I mourned my family member, his partner, and their children. I lost my beloved urban area, Rafah, which is nothing but rubble now. But the toughest sacrifice of all is learning, because that is the loss of the future itself.

To the international community, I state this: preserve our aspirations. We don’t want pity, we want action. The youth deserve literature, educational facilities and security. Education is not an extravagance, it is a essential privilege. Gaza is not just ruins; it is children who persist in hoping beneath the drones at evening. It is my narrative and I will persist in composing, even if my only possessions is a broken pencil and a piece of torn paper.

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

Naglaa Weshah, 40, teacher in a refugee camp

I have been teaching in Gaza for a substantial period. Originally in that urban area, then in another location, and currently in the central camp in the central Gaza Strip. In pre-conflict times, I used to teach six classes of about fourty pupils per class, hundreds of eager students enthusiastic about knowledge.

Instructing them was my purpose and joy in life, and I still recall the gleam in a student’s eyes when a new idea clicked; the kind of moment every instructor cherishes.

I always thought instruction should be vibrant. My teaching space was a space of play, creativity, and activity. We painted maps, performed past occurrences, and turned lessons into stories.

Joy always occupied the area as curiosity displaced apprehension. Certainly, even in earlier times, young residents were always frightened. My classroom was a place of safety but after the seventh, all was altered.

My learning center became a refuge for households running from the explosives. Shortly after, it was attacked and entirely ruined. There are hardly any educational facilities remaining intact in the region now. For this period, everything has been abnormal. The hostilities has destroyed every aspect of our reality: safety, residences, schools, hopes. Fear and grief are perpetual experiences.

Numerous of my students are now deceased – youth who mentioned becoming physicians, painters, and instructors. They were refused even the privilege of living. Those who survive live with malnutrition, relocation and weariness – and yet, they still maintain the desire for education.

At times, when the online access allows, I receive messages from a handful of them. They message inquiring: “Are you OK, educator?” We share short messages, short lessons, tiny sparks of connection amid the disorder. They question if situations will ever revert to standard. I inform them I am uncertain.

Throughout the region, teachers, helpers and charities attempt instruction in any feasible location: in shelters, destroyed learning spaces, or packed refuges. Learning has become an demonstration of perseverance, a way to declare: “We persist.” And so long as we persist in education, we will endure.

Numerous of us are also caregivers. I am a guardian of {three|several