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

'We seek action, not sympathy'.

A young student, 12, Khan Younis

For the past 24 months since I entered a proper school. Two years since I heard the morning bell at my former school, occupied my place and participated actively during my preferred subject. At times I still vividly remember the familiar scents and noises: chalk dust, sharpener leftovers, joyful sounds in corridors. But my learning place was destroyed; it was targeted shortly after the hostilities erupted. My books were burned, and several classmates lost.

I was in the fifth year on that fateful day: the last day I attended classes. That beginning of the day, warning alarms blared through the passageways. Some children cried, others gripped each other. Our teacher tried to calm us, but even her voice trembled. I remember longing for a routine day; instruction, recess, a literary performance. Instead, that day marked the end of my former reality.

The war has taken so much. But the toughest sacrifice of all is learning, because it represents the forfeiture of tomorrow.

Now I dwell alongside my mother and father, male relatives and sister in a packed refuge in Khan Younis. The shelter coverings flap in the wind, providing no climate control. We wait in line for sustenance and drinks. Energy access is fantasy and seclusion is unavailable. Hope feels fragile.

At evening, I gaze toward the night lights through the holes of my shelter and ponder if my peers see the identical heavens. Some reach out when they manage, saying they miss school and have preserved their former exercise books; like treasures from a lost world. I feel remorseful because I’ve forfeited all of mine.

I once dreamed of pursuing pedagogy to support local youth study, even when life was hard. Now I dream of being a writer – to compose, to communicate and to show the world what it means to be a minor in Gaza. I want to narrate our accounts of fear and hunger, but also courage. Because even in this place, amid loss and destruction, our voices refuse to be silent.

When online access exists, I attempt learning digitally. Other times, I attend a tiny space where aid workers educate us arithmetic and Arabic. The lessons are short – the electricity cuts out or the attacks recommence but in these instances, I feel alive. I recollect who I was: the young woman who loved numbers and poems, who believed knowledge could alter reality.

The war has taken so much; our residences, schools and kin. I mourned my paternal relative, his wife, and their offspring. I said goodbye to my beloved urban area, 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 international community, I express this: keep our hopes alive. We seek no sympathy, we demand measures. Young residents deserve books, educational facilities and safety. Education is not an extravagance, it is a basic right. Gaza is not only destruction; it is children who still dream amid unmanned aircraft at night. It is my narrative and I will keep drafting, even if the sole items remaining is a broken pencil and a piece of torn paper.

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

An educator, forty, teacher in central Gaza

I have been instructing in Gaza for a substantial period. Initially in that urban area, then in another location, and now in the central camp in the middle of the territory. Prior to hostilities, I regularly instructed several sets of about 40 students each, nearly 240 young minds enthusiastic about knowledge.

Educating them was my mission and happiness in existence, and I still recall the gleam in a pupil's gaze when a concept was understood; the sort of occasion every instructor cherishes.

I always was convinced education should be dynamic. My classroom was a zone of amusement, creativity, and activity. We painted maps, acted out historical events, and transformed instruction into narratives.

Merriment always filled the room as interest substituted anxiety. Yes, even in earlier times, children in Gaza were always frightened. My teaching space was a protected zone but after 7 October, the situation transformed.

My school became a refuge for relatives running from the explosives. Not long later, it was struck and entirely ruined. There are hardly any learning institutions still erect in this area now. For this period, all has been unusual. The hostilities has shattered every part of our existence: security, homes, educational centers, hopes. Anxiety and sorrow are perpetual experiences.

A significant number of my learners are now deceased – children who spoke of dreaming of physicians, artists, and educators. They were denied even the entitlement to survival. Those who survive endure hunger, relocation and weariness – and yet, they still maintain the will to learn.

At times, when the connectivity allows, I receive messages from a small number of them. They message inquiring: “Are you OK, teacher?” We communicate short messages, short lessons, tiny sparks of interaction amid the turmoil. They inquire if situations will ever return to usual. I inform them I don’t know.

All over Gaza, instructors, volunteers and organizations endeavor education in all available spaces: in shelters, damaged classrooms, or crowded shelters. Schooling has become an act of defiance, a way to say: “We are still here.” And as long as we persist in education, we will endure.

Many of us are also parents. I am a parent of {three|several