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'We don’t want pity, we want action'.

Juwayriya Adwan, twelve, al-Mawasi

It has been two years since I entered a proper school. That long since I heard the start-of-class signal at Khawla Bint al-Azwar school, took my seat and raised my hand during my favourite class. Occasionally I still distinctly recollect the familiar scents and noises: powder from the board, wooden scraps, laughter echoing down the halls. But my learning place was destroyed; it was struck not long after the hostilities erupted. My books were burned, and several classmates lost.

I was in elementary level on the seventh of October: the final day I entered the school building. That beginning of the day, alert signals blared through the corridors. Some students wept, others gripped each other. Our teacher tried to calm us, but even her tone wavered. I remember hoping for a ordinary day; teaching, break time, a literary performance. Instead, that day signaled the conclusion of my previous existence.

Conflict has stolen countless things. But the most painful deprivation of all is education, because it represents the forfeiture of tomorrow.

Now I live with my parents, two brothers and female sibling in a congested safe space in al-Mawasi. The shelter coverings flap in the wind, providing no climate control. We wait in line for water and food. Electricity is a dream and privacy doesn’t exist. Hope feels fragile.

At darkness, I gaze toward the night lights through the gaps of my tent and question if my friends see the comparable vista. Some reach out when they manage, expressing they miss school and have kept their old notebooks; like treasures from a lost world. I feel guilty because I’ve forfeited all of mine.

I once aspired to pursuing pedagogy to help local youth study, even when life was hard. Now I dream of being a writer – to compose, to talk and to show the world what it signifies to be a young person in Gaza. I want to narrate our accounts of fear and hunger, but also courage. Because even here, amid fatality and debris, our voices refuse to be silent.

When online access exists, I try to study via the web. Other times, I attend a tiny space where aid workers teach us mathematics and language. The sessions are brief – the electricity cuts out or the attacks recommence but in those moments, I sense being. I recollect who I was: the young woman who adored mathematics and poetry, who thought learning could change the world.

Conflict has claimed innumerable things; our residences, educational institutions and relatives. I mourned my paternal relative, his partner, and their young ones. I said goodbye to my cherished hometown, Rafah, which is only ruins now. But the hardest loss of all is education, 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. Gaza’s children are entitled to books, schools and safety. Learning is not optional, it is a basic right. The territory is not just ruins; it is minors who continue to aspire amid unmanned aircraft at evening. It is my account and I will keep drafting, even if my only possessions is a fractured utensil and a piece of torn paper.

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

An educator, 40, teacher in a refugee camp

I have been instructing in this area for over ten years. Originally in that urban area, then in another location, and presently in al-Bureij camp in the central Gaza Strip. Prior to hostilities, I typically educated six classes of about dozens of learners, nearly 240 young minds eager to learn.

Educating them was my mission and happiness in life, and I still recollect the twinkle in a learner's look when a concept was understood; the sort of occasion every instructor cherishes.

I always was convinced learning should be full of life. My teaching space was a zone of recreation, aesthetics, and motion. We created cartographic art, dramatized bygone episodes, and transformed instruction into narratives.

Merriment always permeated the space as interest substituted apprehension. Indeed, even in earlier times, young residents were always scared. My teaching space was a place of safety but after the seventh, all was altered.

My learning center became a shelter for relatives running from the aerial attacks. Shortly after, it was struck and completely destroyed. There are almost no learning institutions left standing in this area now. For this period, all has been unusual. The conflict has shattered every part of our reality: safety, homes, schools, hopes. Fear and grief are perpetual experiences.

Many of my learners are now lost – minors who spoke of becoming medical professionals, artists, and instructors. They were denied even the privilege of living. Those who remain experience malnutrition, relocation and weariness – and yet, they still hold onto the desire for education.

At times, when the internet allows, I receive messages from a handful of them. They write questioning: “Are you safe, instructor?” We communicate brief words, miniature instruction, small glimmers of connection amid the chaos. They ask if things will ever revert to standard. I inform them I am uncertain.

All over Gaza, teachers, helpers and organizations attempt instruction wherever possible: in shelters, ruined educational areas, or crowded shelters. Schooling has become an gesture of resistance, a way to declare: “We are still here.” And as long as we persist in education, we will remain.

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