'When education is lost, the future vanishes': Palestinian Youth and Educators on Two Years Without Education.

'We don’t want pity, we want action'.

Juwayriya Adwan, 12, a temporary shelter

For the past two years since I was last inside a real classroom. Two years since I listened to the school chime at my former school, occupied my place and answered questions during my preferred subject. Occasionally I still clearly recall the familiar scents and noises: chalk dust, wooden scraps, cheerful echoes. But my learning place was destroyed; it was targeted not long after the war began. My learning materials incinerated, and some of my friends killed.

I was in elementary level on that fateful day: the final day I entered the school building. That early hours, warning alarms blared through the passageways. Some pupils sobbed, others held hands tightly. Our teacher tried to calm us, but even her tone wavered. I remember wishing for a ordinary day; lessons, break time, a poem recital. Instead, that day became the last page of my previous existence.

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

Now I dwell alongside my guardians, siblings and female sibling in a congested safe space in this coastal area. The tent walls flap in the wind, providing no climate control. We wait in line for nourishment and hydration. Electricity is a dream and personal space is absent. Optimism seems delicate.

At darkness, I gaze toward the celestial bodies through the holes of my shelter and question if my companions see the identical heavens. Some contact me when they are able, expressing they yearn for classes and have retained their previous journals; like relics of a vanished time. I feel ashamed because I’ve forfeited all of mine.

I once envisioned entering the education field to support local youth acquire knowledge, even when life was hard. Now I dream of being a reporter – to draft, to communicate and to demonstrate the world what it represents to be a minor in this region. I want to narrate our accounts of fear and hunger, but also courage. Because even amid these conditions, amid loss and destruction, our words continue.

When there’s some internet, I try to study via the web. Other times, I visit a small tent where aid workers teach us mathematics and language. The sessions are brief – the power fails or the bombing resumes but in such times, I experience vitality. I remember who I was: the young woman who adored mathematics and poetry, who thought education could transform society.

Conflict has claimed innumerable things; our homes, schools and families. I mourned my paternal relative, his partner, and their young ones. I forfeited my cherished hometown, Rafah, which is merely debris now. But the hardest loss of all is education, because that is the loss of the future itself.

To the world, I state this: preserve our aspirations. Compassion isn't enough, we require steps. Young residents merit literature, schools and security. Education is not optional, it is a essential privilege. Gaza is not merely devastation; it is minors who persist in hoping amid unmanned aircraft 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 scrap of damaged material.

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

An educator, 40, instructor in a refugee camp

I have been teaching in this area for more than a decade. Originally in Khan Younis, then in Deir al-Balah, and currently in this refugee settlement in the middle of the territory. Before the war started, I typically educated several sets of about dozens of learners, hundreds of eager students enthusiastic about knowledge.

Instructing them was my mission and happiness in existence, and I still recollect the sparkle in a student’s eyes when a concept was understood; the type of instance every instructor cherishes.

I always believed learning should be full of life. My learning environment was a area of recreation, creativity, and motion. We created cartographic art, performed past occurrences, and converted teaching into tales.

Joy always filled the room as interest substituted anxiety. Indeed, even before the war, young residents were always afraid. My teaching space was a place of safety but after 7 October, everything changed.

My school became a safe haven for families fleeing the aerial attacks. Shortly after, it was targeted and entirely ruined. There are very few learning institutions left standing in this area now. For two years, all has been unusual. The hostilities has shattered every facet of our existence: safety, homes, schools, hopes. Anxiety and sorrow are constant companions.

Many of my learners are now dead – youth who talked about dreaming of physicians, artists, and instructors. They were deprived even the right to exist. Those who survive experience starvation, relocation and fatigue – and yet, they still maintain the thirst for knowledge.

At times, when the online access enables, I receive messages from a handful of them. They message asking: “How are you, teacher?” We communicate short messages, short lessons, minor flashes of connection amid the turmoil. They inquire if things will ever return to usual. I inform them I don’t know.

Throughout Gaza, educators, aid workers and non-profits endeavor education in all available spaces: in shelters, ruined educational areas, or packed refuges. Learning has become an act of defiance, a way to declare: “We are still here.” And so long as we persist in education, we will persist.

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