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'We don’t want pity, we want action'.

Juwayriya Adwan, 12, Khan Younis

For the past two years since I stepped into a proper school. Two years since I heard the start-of-class signal at my former school, sat at my desk and participated actively during my beloved lesson. Sometimes I still distinctly recollect the familiar scents and noises: writing residue, wooden scraps, cheerful echoes. But my learning place was destroyed; it was struck soon after the hostilities erupted. My books were burned, and several classmates lost.

I was in fifth grade on the seventh of October: the concluding day I attended classes. That beginning of the day, warning alarms sounded through the halls. Some pupils sobbed, others held hands tightly. Our teacher tried to calm us, but even she sounded shaky. I remember longing for a normal day; teaching, recess, 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 education, because it represents the forfeiture of tomorrow.

Now I live with my mother and father, male relatives and sister in a packed refuge in Khan Younis. The tent walls sway with breezes, providing no climate control. We wait in line for water and food. Energy access is fantasy and privacy doesn’t exist. Hope feels fragile.

At darkness, I look up at the stars through the holes of my temporary home and wonder if my peers see the identical heavens. Some contact me when they can, stating they miss school and have preserved their previous journals; like treasures from a lost world. I feel remorseful because I’ve forfeited all of mine.

I once aspired to pursuing pedagogy to support local youth acquire knowledge, even when existence was challenging. Now I hope for being a journalist – to compose, to speak and to show the world what it signifies to be a young person in this region. I want to narrate our accounts of apprehension and need, but also fortitude. Because even here, amid fatality and debris, our expressions persist.

When connectivity is available, I endeavor to educate myself digitally. Sometimes, I visit a tiny space where helpers teach us arithmetic and Arabic. The instruction is limited – the electricity cuts out or the airstrikes begin again but in those moments, I experience vitality. I recollect who I was: the young woman who cherished arithmetic and verse, who believed learning could change the world.

Hostilities have stolen countless aspects; our residences, educational institutions and kin. I mourned my uncle, his partner, and their young ones. I forfeited my beautiful city, that southern city, which is nothing but rubble now. But the most painful deprivation of all is learning, because that is the loss of the future itself.

To the global audience, I state this: keep our hopes alive. We don’t want pity, we want action. The youth are entitled to books, schools and protection. Education is not an extravagance, it is a essential privilege. Gaza is not merely devastation; it is minors who persist in hoping under aerial surveillance 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.

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

Naglaa Weshah, forty, teacher in al-Bureij camp

I have been educating in the region for more than a decade. Originally in that urban area, then in a different town, and currently in al-Bureij camp in the central Gaza Strip. Before the war started, I typically educated multiple groups of about fourty pupils per class, hundreds of eager students eager to learn.

Educating them was my vocation and delight in reality, and I still recollect the twinkle in a learner's look when a knowledge was acquired; the type of instance every teacher lives for.

I always thought education should be dynamic. My classroom was a area of recreation, aesthetics, and movement. We painted maps, acted out historical events, and transformed instruction into narratives.

Laughter always occupied the area as inquisitiveness displaced anxiety. Yes, even before the war, local youth were always frightened. My classroom was a protected zone but after the seventh, all was altered.

My school became a shelter for families running from the explosives. Soon, it was struck and entirely ruined. There are almost no learning institutions remaining intact in this area now. For 24 months, all has been unusual. The hostilities has shattered every aspect of our lives: security, dwellings, learning places, aspirations. Apprehension and mourning are constant companions.

Many of my learners are now lost – children who mentioned aspiring to be doctors, painters, and teachers. They were deprived even the privilege of living. Those who remain experience hunger, eviction and fatigue – and yet, they still hold onto the desire for education.

Sometimes, when the internet enables, I hear from a few of them. They message inquiring: “Are you OK, teacher?” We exchange brief words, short lessons, minor flashes of contact amid the turmoil. They question if circumstances will ever return to usual. I inform them I have no answer.

Throughout Gaza, teachers, volunteers and non-profits endeavor education wherever possible: in shelters, destroyed learning spaces, or packed refuges. Schooling has become an demonstration of perseverance, a way to say: “Our presence continues.” And provided that we keep acquiring knowledge, we will persist.

A significant number of us are also parents. I am a mother of {three|several