'The loss of education is the loss of the future itself': Palestinian Youth and Teachers on 24 Months Deprived of School.

'We don’t want pity, we want action'.

A young student, 12, Khan Younis

For the past 24 months since I entered a learning environment. That long since I heard the start-of-class signal at Khawla Bint al-Azwar school, took my seat and participated actively during my preferred subject. Occasionally I still distinctly recollect the sounds and smells: powder from the board, sharpener leftovers, joyful sounds in corridors. But my educational institution is gone; it was bombed not long after the hostilities erupted. My learning materials incinerated, and some of my friends killed.

I was in fifth grade on the seventh of October: the final day I went to school. That morning, warning alarms screamed through the halls. Some students wept, others clasped palms firmly. Our teacher tried to calm us, but even her tone wavered. I remember hoping for a normal day; lessons, intermission, a literary performance. Instead, that day became the last page of my old life.

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

Now I reside with my mother and father, male relatives and female sibling in a packed refuge in al-Mawasi. The tent walls move with air currents, failing to insulate. We line up for sustenance and drinks. Power is imaginary and privacy doesn’t exist. Hope feels fragile.

At darkness, I observe the night lights through the openings of my temporary home and ponder if my friends see the comparable vista. Some message me when they manage, saying they yearn for classes and have preserved their old notebooks; like valuables from a bygone era. I feel remorseful because I’ve misplaced all of mine.

I once envisioned becoming a teacher to help local youth acquire knowledge, even when life was hard. Now I hope for being a journalist – to compose, to speak and to reveal 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 here, amid death and ruins, our words continue.

When online access exists, I attempt learning digitally. Sometimes, I visit a tiny space where volunteers instruct us mathematics and language. The lessons are short – the power fails or the airstrikes begin again but in these instances, I experience vitality. I recall who I was: the student who loved numbers and poems, who believed knowledge could alter reality.

The war has taken so much; our dwellings, educational institutions and relatives. I grieved for my uncle, his partner, and their offspring. I said goodbye to my beloved urban area, my previous home, which is merely debris now. But the most painful deprivation of all is schooling, because it represents the forfeiture of tomorrow.

To the world, I express this: don’t let our dreams die. We seek no sympathy, we want action. The youth are entitled to literature, educational facilities and safety. Education is not an extravagance, it is a fundamental entitlement. This region is not only destruction; it is minors who still dream amid unmanned aircraft at evening. It is my narrative and I will continue writing, even if my only possessions is a fractured utensil and a scrap of damaged material.

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

An educator, 40, instructor in a refugee camp

I have been instructing in Gaza for over ten years. First in a southern city, then in another location, and now in the central camp in the middle of the territory. Prior to hostilities, I regularly instructed six classes of about 40 students each, hundreds of eager students keen on education.

Educating them was my mission and happiness in existence, and I still recall the twinkle in a learner's look when a new idea clicked; the kind of moment every teacher strives for.

I always believed instruction should be dynamic. My learning environment was a space of play, aesthetics, and activity. We designed geographical illustrations, dramatized bygone episodes, and turned lessons into stories.

Merriment always filled the room as interest replaced apprehension. Indeed, even before the war, children in Gaza were always afraid. My classroom was a protected zone but after the seventh, everything changed.

My learning center became a refuge for households running from the bombs. Shortly after, it was struck and totally demolished. There are almost no learning institutions remaining intact in the region now. For this period, all has been unusual. The hostilities has broken every facet of our existence: protection, dwellings, schools, dreams. Anxiety and sorrow are constant companions.

Numerous of my pupils are now deceased – minors who mentioned becoming medical professionals, creatives, and educators. They were refused even the entitlement to survival. Those who remain endure hunger, displacement and fatigue – and yet, they still cling to the will to learn.

At times, when the online access permits, I get in touch with a handful of them. They write questioning: “Are you OK, educator?” We share brief words, miniature instruction, small glimmers of interaction amid the disorder. They ask if circumstances will ever revert to standard. I tell them I have no answer.

Throughout the region, educators, helpers and non-profits try to teach in any feasible location: in shelters, damaged classrooms, or congested safe zones. Education has become an act of defiance, a way to say: “We persist.” And as long as we persist in education, we will endure.

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