'Without education, we lose our future': Palestinian Children and Educators on 24 Months Without Education.

'We don’t want pity, we want action'.

A young student, 12, Khan Younis

For the past two years since I stepped into a learning environment. That long since I listened to the start-of-class signal at Khawla Bint al-Azwar school, took my seat and answered questions during my favourite class. Occasionally I still clearly recall the familiar scents and noises: chalk dust, sharpener leftovers, laughter echoing down the halls. But my learning place was destroyed; it was bombed not long after the conflict started. My textbooks turned to ash, and some of my friends killed.

I was in fifth grade on that fateful day: the concluding day I entered the school building. That morning, air raid sirens blared through the corridors. Some pupils sobbed, others clasped palms firmly. Our educator attempted reassurance, but even her tone wavered. I remember hoping for a ordinary day; teaching, break time, a literary performance. Instead, that day marked the end of my old life.

The war has taken so much. But the toughest sacrifice of all is learning, because that is the loss of the future itself.

Now I reside with my mother and father, two brothers and female sibling in a congested safe space in al-Mawasi. The shelter coverings flap in the wind, failing to insulate. We wait in line for sustenance and drinks. Electricity is a dream and privacy doesn’t exist. Optimism seems delicate.

At darkness, I gaze toward the stars through the openings of my temporary home and question if my friends see the identical heavens. Some message me when they can, expressing they long for education and have preserved their former exercise books; like relics of a vanished time. I feel remorseful because I’ve lost all of mine.

I once envisioned becoming a teacher to assist Gaza’s children learn, even when life was hard. Now I aim for being a reporter – to draft, to communicate and to reveal the world what it means to be a minor in this region. I want to tell our stories of fear and hunger, but also fortitude. Because even in this place, amid fatality and debris, our words continue.

When there’s some internet, I try to study digitally. Sometimes, I go to a modest shelter where aid workers teach us mathematics and language. The sessions are brief – the electricity cuts out or the airstrikes begin again but in those moments, I feel alive. I remember who I was: the student who cherished arithmetic and verse, who thought education could transform society.

Conflict has claimed innumerable things; our dwellings, educational institutions and families. I mourned my paternal relative, his partner, and their offspring. I forfeited my beloved urban area, Rafah, which is nothing but rubble now. But the hardest loss of all is learning, because it represents the forfeiture of tomorrow.

To the international community, I express this: preserve our aspirations. Compassion isn't enough, we require steps. The youth are entitled to literature, educational facilities and safety. Learning is not an extravagance, it is a basic right. The territory is not merely devastation; it is children who persist in hoping amid unmanned aircraft at darkness. It is my account and I will continue writing, even if the sole items remaining is a fractured utensil and a scrap of damaged material.

'Students ask: "Teacher, are you safe?"'.

Naglaa Weshah, forty, teacher in al-Bureij camp

I have been educating in this area for over ten years. Originally in a southern city, then in Deir al-Balah, and currently in al-Bureij camp in the central Gaza Strip. Prior to hostilities, I used to teach multiple groups of about dozens of learners, nearly 240 young minds enthusiastic about knowledge.

Educating them was my mission and happiness in life, and I still recollect the twinkle in a student’s eyes when a new idea clicked; the sort of occasion every educator lives for.

I always was convinced education should be dynamic. My teaching space was a space of amusement, art, and movement. We created cartographic art, dramatized bygone episodes, and converted teaching into tales.

Merriment always occupied the area as inquisitiveness displaced apprehension. Certainly, even prior to conflict, local youth were always afraid. My teaching space was a place of safety but after that day, all was altered.

My learning center became a safe haven for households fleeing the bombs. Not long later, it was targeted and entirely ruined. There are almost no learning institutions still erect in the region now. For 24 months, nothing has been normal. The hostilities has destroyed every facet of our reality: protection, residences, learning places, hopes. Fear and grief are perpetual experiences.

A significant number of my pupils are now lost – youth who spoke of dreaming of physicians, creatives, and instructors. They were deprived even the privilege of living. Those who remain endure starvation, displacement and weariness – and yet, they still maintain the thirst for knowledge.

Occasionally, when the internet enables, I get in touch with a few of them. They message asking: “How are you, teacher?” We communicate brief words, short lessons, tiny sparks of interaction amid the turmoil. They question if situations will ever return to usual. I state to them I have no answer.

Throughout the region, teachers, aid workers and non-profits try to teach in any feasible location: in tents, ruined educational areas, or packed refuges. Education has become an gesture of resistance, a way to say: “We are still here.” And as long as we keep acquiring knowledge, we will remain.

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