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'We don’t want pity, we want action'.

A young student, 12, Khan Younis

For the past 24 months since I stepped into a proper school. Two years since I heard the school chime at my former school, occupied my place and participated actively during my favourite class. Occasionally I still vividly remember the auditory and olfactory sensations: powder from the board, wooden scraps, laughter echoing down the halls. But my school no longer exists; it was struck soon after the conflict started. My textbooks turned to ash, and companions perished.

I was in elementary level on the seventh of October: the final day I went to school. That morning, air raid sirens blared through the corridors. Some children cried, others held hands tightly. Our educator attempted reassurance, but even her tone wavered. I remember longing for a routine day; lessons, intermission, a poem recital. Instead, that day became the last page of my old life.

Conflict has stolen countless things. But the most painful deprivation of all is education, because without it, our prospects disappear.

Now I live with my parents, male relatives and female sibling in a packed refuge in this coastal area. The tent walls move with air currents, providing no climate control. We line up for nourishment and hydration. Power is imaginary and privacy doesn’t exist. Aspiration appears brittle.

At evening, I look up at the celestial bodies through the holes of my shelter and wonder if my peers see the comparable vista. Some message me when they manage, expressing they yearn for classes and have retained their old notebooks; like treasures from a lost world. I feel remorseful because I’ve forfeited all of mine.

I once dreamed of becoming a teacher to assist Gaza’s children acquire knowledge, even when existence was challenging. Now I hope for being a journalist – to write, to speak and to reveal the world what it means to be a child in Gaza. I want to narrate our accounts of fear and hunger, but also fortitude. Because even amid these conditions, amid death and ruins, our words continue.

When connectivity is available, I endeavor to educate myself digitally. Other times, I attend a modest shelter where helpers teach us math and Arabic. The lessons are short – the power fails or the bombing resumes but in such times, I sense being. I recall who I was: the student who loved numbers and poems, who believed learning could change the world.

Conflict has claimed innumerable things; our homes, schools and relatives. I lost my uncle, his wife, and their young ones. I lost my beautiful city, that southern city, which is merely debris now. But the most painful deprivation of all is education, because it represents the forfeiture of tomorrow.

To the world, I say this: keep our hopes alive. We seek no sympathy, we want action. Gaza’s children are entitled to literature, educational facilities and protection. Education is not optional, it is a fundamental entitlement. The territory is not merely devastation; it is minors who continue to aspire beneath the drones at darkness. It is my story and I will persist in composing, even if all I have left is a damaged writing tool and a fragment of ripped sheet.

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

Naglaa Weshah, forty, instructor in central Gaza

I have been instructing in this area for more than a decade. First in a southern city, then in another location, and now in the central camp in the heart of the region. Prior to hostilities, I typically educated six classes of about fourty pupils per class, hundreds of eager students keen on education.

Teaching them was my mission and happiness in existence, and I still remember the sparkle in a student’s eyes when a new idea clicked; the type of instance every educator lives for.

I always believed instruction should be full of life. My classroom was a area of amusement, aesthetics, and activity. We created cartographic art, acted out historical events, and turned lessons into stories.

Laughter always occupied the area as curiosity displaced anxiety. Indeed, even before the war, young residents were always frightened. My learning environment was a secure location but after 7 October, the situation transformed.

My school became a shelter for relatives escaping the aerial attacks. Shortly after, it was struck and entirely ruined. There are very few educational facilities left standing in the region now. For this period, nothing has been normal. The war has shattered every aspect of our lives: safety, dwellings, learning places, dreams. Apprehension and mourning are constant companions.

Numerous of my learners are now lost – youth who mentioned aspiring to be doctors, artists, and educators. They were refused even the right to exist. Those who are still here endure hunger, eviction and exhaustion – and yet, they still hold onto the will to learn.

Sometimes, when the internet permits, I hear from a small number of them. They message asking: “How are you, instructor?” We communicate concise phrases, abbreviated teaching, small glimmers of interaction amid the chaos. They ask if situations will ever revert to standard. I inform them I am uncertain.

Across this territory, educators, volunteers and organizations try to teach in all available spaces: in tents, ruined educational areas, or packed refuges. Learning has become an act of defiance, a way to say: “We persist.” And provided that we persist in education, we will endure.

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