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'We don’t want pity, we want action'.

Juwayriya Adwan, twelve, al-Mawasi

It has been 24 months since I entered a proper school. That long since I listened to the start-of-class signal at Khawla Bint al-Azwar school, occupied my place and participated actively during my preferred subject. Occasionally I still clearly recall the familiar scents and noises: writing residue, pencil shavings, joyful sounds in corridors. But my learning place was destroyed; it was bombed not long after the hostilities erupted. My learning materials incinerated, and some of my friends killed.

I was in elementary level on that fateful day: the concluding day I attended classes. That beginning of the day, warning alarms sounded through the passageways. Some students wept, others gripped each other. Our instructor sought to soothe, but even she sounded shaky. I remember wishing for a routine day; teaching, intermission, 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 learning, because without it, our prospects disappear.

Now I dwell alongside my mother and father, male relatives and female sibling in a packed refuge in Khan Younis. The temporary partitions flap in the wind, keeping neither cold nor heat away. We line up for sustenance and drinks. Energy access is fantasy and privacy doesn’t exist. Hope feels fragile.

At darkness, I observe the stars through the openings of my shelter and question if my companions see the identical heavens. Some message me when they can, saying they long for education and have preserved their old notebooks; like valuables from a bygone era. I feel remorseful because I’ve forfeited all of mine.

I once envisioned becoming a teacher to help Gaza’s children study, even when life was hard. Now I aim for being a reporter – to draft, to talk and to reveal the world what it represents to be a minor in Gaza. I want to narrate our accounts of fear and hunger, but also bravery. Because even in this place, amid fatality and debris, our voices refuse to be silent.

When there’s some internet, I try to study via the web. On other occasions, I attend a modest shelter where helpers educate us arithmetic and Arabic. The instruction is limited – the electricity cuts out or the airstrikes begin again but in such times, I experience vitality. I recollect who I was: the student who adored mathematics and poetry, who was convinced learning could change the world.

Conflict has claimed innumerable things; our residences, educational institutions and kin. I lost my uncle, his spouse, and their young ones. I said goodbye to my cherished hometown, that southern city, which is nothing but rubble now. But the hardest loss of all is schooling, because without it, our prospects disappear.

To the global audience, I express this: keep our hopes alive. We seek no sympathy, we demand measures. Young residents are entitled to texts, educational facilities and protection. Learning is not a luxury, it is a fundamental entitlement. This region is not merely devastation; it is youth who still dream amid unmanned aircraft at darkness. It is my account and I will keep drafting, even if the sole items remaining is a fractured utensil and a fragment of ripped sheet.

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

An educator, forty, instructor in a refugee camp

I have been educating in this area for a substantial period. Originally in Khan Younis, then in a different town, and currently in al-Bureij camp in the heart of the region. In pre-conflict times, I typically educated multiple groups of about dozens of learners, hundreds of eager students enthusiastic about knowledge.

Teaching them was my purpose and joy in existence, and I still remember the gleam in a learner's look when a concept was understood; the kind of moment every educator strives for.

I always thought education should be dynamic. My classroom was a area of play, creativity, and motion. We painted maps, performed past occurrences, and transformed instruction into narratives.

Laughter always permeated the space as curiosity displaced fear. Certainly, even in earlier times, children in Gaza were always frightened. My learning environment was a place of safety but after 7 October, everything changed.

My school became a shelter for households fleeing the aerial attacks. Soon, it was targeted and entirely ruined. There are hardly any schools left standing in the region now. For 24 months, nothing has been normal. The hostilities has broken every aspect of our reality: security, residences, learning places, aspirations. Anxiety and sorrow are perpetual experiences.

A significant number of my pupils are now deceased – minors who talked about aspiring to be doctors, creatives, and teachers. They were denied even the right to exist. Those who remain experience hunger, eviction and fatigue – and nevertheless, they still maintain the will to learn.

Occasionally, when the internet enables, I get in touch with a small number of them. They message questioning: “Are you OK, instructor?” We exchange brief words, miniature instruction, minor flashes of interaction amid the turmoil. They question if situations will ever revert to standard. I state to them I have no answer.

Across this territory, educators, volunteers and non-profits try to teach in any feasible location: in temporary structures, destroyed learning spaces, or packed refuges. Education has become an gesture of resistance, a way to express: “We persist.” And as long as we keep acquiring knowledge, we will endure.

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