'Without education, we lose our future': Palestinian Children and Teachers on 24 Months Without Education.

'We don’t want pity, we want action'.

A young student, 12, al-Mawasi

For the past 24 months since I stepped into a real classroom. That long since I heard the school chime at the institution I attended, sat at my desk and participated actively during my favourite class. At times 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 soon after the war began. My learning materials incinerated, and several classmates lost.

I was in elementary level on the seventh of October: the concluding day I went to school. That early hours, air raid sirens blared through the passageways. Some pupils sobbed, others held hands tightly. Our educator attempted reassurance, but even she sounded shaky. I remember hoping for a ordinary day; instruction, intermission, a literary performance. Instead, that day marked the end of my old life.

Conflict has stolen countless things. But the hardest loss of all is education, because it represents the forfeiture of tomorrow.

Now I reside with my parents, siblings and sister in a congested safe space in this coastal area. 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 personal space is absent. Aspiration appears brittle.

At night, I look up at the celestial bodies through the gaps of my temporary home and ponder if my peers see the identical heavens. Some message me when they are able, saying they long for education and have kept their former exercise books; like relics of a vanished time. I feel ashamed because I’ve lost all of mine.

I once dreamed of pursuing pedagogy to assist young residents study, even when circumstances were difficult. Now I dream of being a journalist – to draft, to talk and to demonstrate the world what it means to be a child in this region. I want to narrate our accounts of apprehension and need, but also bravery. Because even here, amid fatality and debris, our expressions persist.

When online access exists, I endeavor to educate myself online. Sometimes, I visit a tiny space where helpers educate us mathematics and language. The sessions are brief – the electricity cuts out or the airstrikes begin again but in those moments, I sense being. I recollect who I was: the student who loved numbers and poems, who thought education could transform society.

Conflict has claimed innumerable things; our residences, educational institutions and kin. I lost my paternal relative, his spouse, and their offspring. I said goodbye to my beautiful city, that southern city, which is nothing but rubble now. But the toughest sacrifice of all is schooling, because that is the loss of the future itself.

To the global audience, I say this: don’t let our dreams die. We seek no sympathy, we want action. The youth merit books, schools and safety. Education is not a luxury, it is a fundamental entitlement. Gaza is not only destruction; it is minors who persist in hoping amid unmanned aircraft at evening. It is my narrative and I will continue writing, 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, teacher in al-Bureij camp

I have been instructing in this area for a substantial period. Originally in a southern city, then in Deir al-Balah, and currently in the central camp in the middle of the territory. Before the war started, I typically educated six classes of about 40 students each, hundreds of eager students eager to learn.

Instructing them was my vocation and delight in life, and I still recall the twinkle in a pupil's gaze when a concept was understood; the kind of moment every educator cherishes.

I always thought instruction should be dynamic. My teaching space was a space of play, aesthetics, and movement. We created cartographic art, performed past occurrences, and converted teaching into tales.

Joy always occupied the area as inquisitiveness substituted anxiety. Certainly, even before the war, local youth were always scared. My teaching space was a place of safety but after the seventh, everything changed.

My school became a shelter for households escaping the explosives. Shortly after, it was struck and totally demolished. There are almost no schools left standing in this area now. For two years, all has been unusual. The conflict has shattered every facet of our existence: protection, dwellings, educational centers, aspirations. Fear and grief are ever-present realities.

A significant number of my learners are now deceased – minors who spoke of aspiring to be physicians, creatives, and teachers. They were denied even the privilege of living. Those who survive endure malnutrition, displacement and weariness – and however, they still cling to the will to learn.

Occasionally, when the connectivity allows, I hear from a small number of them. They contact asking: “Are you safe, teacher?” We exchange concise phrases, short lessons, minor flashes of interaction amid the turmoil. They inquire if circumstances will ever revert to standard. I state to them I don’t know.

All over this territory, educators, helpers and non-profits try to teach in any feasible location: in tents, damaged classrooms, or packed refuges. Education has become an gesture of resistance, a way to express: “We persist.” And so long as we keep acquiring knowledge, we will remain.

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