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'Our plea is for action, not compassion'.

A young student, 12, a temporary shelter

It has been 24 months since I was last inside a learning environment. Two years since I heard the start-of-class signal at Khawla Bint al-Azwar school, took my seat and answered questions during my favourite class. Sometimes I still vividly remember the sounds and smells: chalk dust, pencil shavings, laughter echoing down the halls. But my educational institution is gone; it was bombed shortly after the hostilities erupted. My learning materials incinerated, and some of my friends killed.

I was in elementary level on 7 October: the last day I attended classes. That morning, alert signals sounded through the passageways. Some students wept, others clasped palms firmly. Our educator attempted reassurance, but even she sounded shaky. I remember longing for a ordinary day; instruction, intermission, a verse presentation. Instead, that day became the last page of my previous existence.

Hostilities have claimed innumerable aspects. But the most painful deprivation of all is education, because that is the loss of the future itself.

Now I dwell alongside my mother and father, two brothers 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 sustenance and drinks. Electricity is a dream and seclusion is unavailable. Optimism seems delicate.

At evening, I gaze toward the night lights through the holes of my tent and question if my friends see the identical heavens. Some reach out when they are able, saying they miss school and have kept their old notebooks; like relics of a vanished time. I feel guilty because I’ve lost all of mine.

I once dreamed of entering the education field to help Gaza’s children acquire knowledge, even when circumstances were difficult. Now I dream of being a journalist – to compose, to talk and to demonstrate the world what it means to be a young person in this region. I want to narrate our accounts of apprehension and need, but also bravery. Because even in this place, amid loss and destruction, our words continue.

When connectivity is available, I try to study online. Sometimes, I visit a small tent where volunteers educate us mathematics and language. The lessons are short – the electricity cuts out or the bombing resumes but in those moments, I sense being. I recall who I was: the young woman who cherished arithmetic and verse, who was convinced learning could change the world.

Hostilities have stolen countless aspects; our homes, educational institutions and relatives. I grieved for my uncle, his partner, and their children. I said goodbye to my cherished hometown, my previous home, which is nothing but rubble now. But the toughest sacrifice of all is schooling, because without it, our prospects disappear.

To the global audience, I state this: preserve our aspirations. Compassion isn't enough, we require steps. Gaza’s children merit literature, learning environments and safety. Learning is not an extravagance, it is a essential privilege. The territory is not only destruction; it is children who persist in hoping beneath the drones at darkness. It is my story and I will keep drafting, even if all I have left is a broken pencil and a fragment of ripped sheet.

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

An educator, 40, teacher in central Gaza

I have been teaching in the region for over ten years. Originally in a southern city, then in another location, and currently in this refugee settlement in the middle of the territory. Before the war started, I used to teach multiple groups of about fourty pupils per class, hundreds of eager students eager to learn.

Instructing them was my vocation and delight in existence, and I still recall the gleam in a student’s eyes when a concept was understood; the type of instance every instructor lives for.

I always thought education should be vibrant. My teaching space was a zone of recreation, creativity, and activity. We created cartographic art, dramatized bygone episodes, and converted teaching into tales.

Merriment always occupied the area as interest replaced apprehension. Yes, even before the war, local youth were always afraid. My learning environment was a protected zone but after 7 October, everything changed.

My learning center became a shelter for households running from the aerial attacks. Not long later, it was struck and completely destroyed. There are hardly any schools still erect in this area now. For this period, nothing has been normal. The conflict has shattered every aspect of our existence: protection, residences, learning places, dreams. Apprehension and mourning are ever-present realities.

Numerous of my pupils are now deceased – minors who spoke of becoming medical professionals, creatives, and educators. They were refused even the right to exist. Those who are still here live with malnutrition, displacement and fatigue – and yet, they still cling to the desire for education.

Sometimes, when the online access allows, I get in touch with a small number of them. They write questioning: “How are you, educator?” We exchange brief words, short lessons, small glimmers of interaction amid the chaos. They inquire if situations will ever go back to normal. I inform them I don’t know.

Throughout the region, teachers, helpers and charities endeavor education wherever possible: in temporary structures, destroyed learning spaces, or packed refuges. Learning has become an act of defiance, a way to express: “Our presence continues.” And provided that we keep acquiring knowledge, we will remain.

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