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'Our plea is for action, not compassion'.

Juwayriya Adwan, 12, al-Mawasi

It has been two years since I entered a proper school. Two years since I heard the start-of-class signal at the institution I attended, took my seat and participated actively during my preferred subject. At times I still distinctly recollect the auditory and olfactory sensations: chalk dust, pencil shavings, cheerful echoes. But my learning place was destroyed; it was struck not long after the war began. My books were burned, and companions perished.

I was in fifth grade on the seventh of October: the last day I went to school. That beginning of the day, air raid sirens sounded through the passageways. Some students wept, others gripped each other. Our educator attempted reassurance, but even she sounded shaky. I remember wishing for a ordinary day; instruction, break time, a literary performance. Instead, that day marked the end of my former reality.

Conflict has stolen countless things. But the toughest sacrifice of all is education, because it represents the forfeiture of tomorrow.

Now I dwell alongside my parents, male relatives and female sibling in a packed refuge in this coastal area. The tent walls sway with breezes, keeping neither cold nor heat away. We line up for water and food. Energy access is fantasy and seclusion is unavailable. Aspiration appears brittle.

At evening, I gaze toward the night lights through the openings of my temporary home and question if my peers see the same sky. Some contact me when they manage, expressing they miss school and have retained their old notebooks; like treasures from a lost world. I feel remorseful because I’ve lost all of mine.

I once aspired to becoming a teacher to help Gaza’s children study, even when existence was challenging. Now I dream of being a journalist – to draft, to talk and to demonstrate the world what it signifies to be a child in the Strip. I want to share our experiences of fear and hunger, but also courage. Because even in this place, amid fatality and debris, our expressions persist.

When there’s some internet, I try to study online. On other occasions, I attend a small tent where helpers educate us math and Arabic. The lessons are short – the electricity cuts out or the attacks recommence but in such times, I sense being. I recollect who I was: the young woman who loved numbers and poems, who was convinced knowledge could alter reality.

The war has taken so much; our residences, educational institutions and kin. I grieved for my family member, his wife, and their offspring. I said goodbye to my cherished hometown, Rafah, which is merely debris now. But the most painful deprivation of all is schooling, because that is the loss of the future itself.

To the world, I say this: don’t let our dreams die. We don’t want pity, we require steps. The youth deserve books, schools and protection. Learning is not a luxury, it is a essential privilege. The territory is not only destruction; it is youth who still dream under aerial surveillance at night. It is my story and I will continue writing, even if my only possessions is a damaged writing tool and a scrap of damaged material.

'Pupils inquire: "Are you alright, educator?"'.

An educator, forty, instructor in al-Bureij camp

I have been teaching in the region for over ten years. Initially in that urban area, then in another location, and presently in the central camp in the middle of the territory. In pre-conflict times, I used to teach six classes of about dozens of learners, almost two hundred forty individuals eager to learn.

Instructing them was my mission and happiness in life, and I still remember the gleam in a student’s eyes when a knowledge was acquired; the kind of moment every educator strives for.

I always thought learning should be full of life. My classroom was a zone of recreation, aesthetics, and motion. We painted maps, performed past occurrences, and transformed instruction into narratives.

Laughter always permeated the space as interest substituted anxiety. Indeed, even before the war, local youth were always afraid. My classroom was a secure location but after 7 October, the situation transformed.

My educational institution became a shelter for relatives running from the aerial attacks. Shortly after, it was attacked and completely destroyed. There are almost no learning institutions still erect in this area now. For this period, everything has been abnormal. The conflict has broken every part of our lives: security, homes, schools, dreams. Anxiety and sorrow are ever-present realities.

A significant number of my students are now lost – minors who mentioned aspiring to be physicians, creatives, and instructors. They were deprived even the right to exist. Those who are still here experience starvation, eviction and weariness – and yet, they still cling to the desire for education.

Occasionally, when the online access permits, I hear from a small number of them. They message inquiring: “How are you, instructor?” We share brief words, abbreviated teaching, small glimmers of contact amid the chaos. They inquire if things will ever revert to standard. I tell them I don’t know.

All over the region, educators, aid workers and organizations try to teach wherever possible: in tents, ruined educational areas, or packed refuges. Learning has become an demonstration of perseverance, a way to declare: “We persist.” And provided that we continue learning, we will endure.

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