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'Our plea is for action, not compassion'.

A young student, twelve, a temporary shelter

For the past two years since I entered a proper school. That long since I listened to the school chime at my former school, took my seat and participated actively during my beloved lesson. Sometimes I still vividly remember the familiar scents and noises: chalk dust, pencil shavings, cheerful echoes. But my learning place was destroyed; it was struck soon after the war began. My books were burned, and several classmates lost.

I was in fifth grade on the seventh of October: the concluding day I went to school. That beginning of the day, warning alarms blared through the corridors. Some students wept, others held hands tightly. Our teacher tried to calm us, but even she sounded shaky. I remember hoping for a routine day; teaching, break time, a literary performance. Instead, that day marked the end of my old life.

The war has taken so much. But the hardest loss of all is education, because that is the loss of the future itself.

Now I reside with my parents, male relatives and sister in a congested safe space in Khan Younis. The shelter coverings flap in the wind, failing to insulate. We line up for water and food. Electricity is a dream and seclusion is unavailable. Aspiration appears brittle.

At evening, I look up at the stars through the gaps of my shelter and wonder if my friends see the identical heavens. Some message me when they can, stating they miss school and have preserved their previous journals; like valuables from a bygone era. I feel guilty because I’ve forfeited all of mine.

I once aspired to entering the education field to help young residents learn, even when life was hard. Now I dream of being a writer – to write, to talk and to reveal the world what it signifies to be a child in the Strip. I want to narrate our accounts of fear and hunger, but also bravery. Because even here, amid fatality and debris, our words continue.

When online access exists, I attempt learning via the web. Sometimes, I attend a tiny space where helpers educate us math and Arabic. The sessions are brief – the electricity cuts out or the bombing resumes but in those moments, I experience vitality. I remember who I was: the girl who loved numbers and poems, who believed learning could change the world.

Conflict has claimed innumerable things; our homes, learning centers and kin. I grieved for my uncle, his spouse, and their offspring. I lost my beautiful city, my previous home, which is nothing but rubble now. But the toughest sacrifice of all is learning, because it represents the forfeiture of tomorrow.

To the international community, I say this: keep our hopes alive. We don’t want pity, we want action. Young residents deserve books, learning environments and safety. Schooling is not optional, it is a fundamental entitlement. Gaza is not only destruction; it is minors who still dream under aerial surveillance at evening. It is my story and I will continue writing, even if all I have left is a broken pencil and a piece of torn paper.

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

An educator, 40, instructor in central Gaza

I have been instructing in this area for more than a decade. Initially in Khan Younis, then in Deir al-Balah, and currently in al-Bureij camp in the middle of the territory. Before the war started, I typically educated several sets of about dozens of learners, hundreds of eager students keen on education.

Instructing them was my purpose and joy in life, and I still remember the sparkle in a student’s eyes when a new idea clicked; the type of instance every instructor strives for.

I always believed education should be vibrant. My learning environment was a area of play, art, and activity. We designed geographical illustrations, performed past occurrences, and converted teaching into tales.

Laughter always occupied the area as curiosity substituted apprehension. Indeed, even prior to conflict, children in Gaza were always frightened. My learning environment was a place of safety but after that day, all was altered.

My learning center became a shelter for relatives escaping the aerial attacks. Soon, it was targeted and totally demolished. There are almost no learning institutions still erect in the region now. For two years, nothing has been normal. The conflict has shattered every part of our existence: safety, homes, educational centers, aspirations. Anxiety and sorrow are perpetual experiences.

A significant number of my learners are now deceased – minors who spoke of becoming doctors, artists, and educators. They were refused even the entitlement to survival. Those who are still here endure malnutrition, displacement and exhaustion – and yet, they still hold onto the desire for education.

Occasionally, when the connectivity enables, I hear from a handful of them. They message questioning: “How are you, educator?” We communicate brief words, abbreviated teaching, minor flashes of connection amid the turmoil. They question if things will ever return to usual. I state to them I have no answer.

All over the region, instructors, helpers and non-profits try to teach in any feasible location: in shelters, damaged classrooms, or crowded shelters. Schooling has become an act of defiance, a way to declare: “Our presence continues.” And so long as we continue learning, we will remain.

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