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'We don’t want pity, we want action'.

A young student, 12, al-Mawasi

It has been 24 months since I entered a real classroom. That long since I heard the start-of-class signal at Khawla Bint al-Azwar school, sat at my desk and participated actively during my favourite class. Occasionally I still clearly recall the familiar scents and noises: chalk dust, pencil shavings, laughter echoing down the halls. But my learning place was destroyed; it was bombed soon after the war began. My learning materials incinerated, and companions perished.

I was in elementary level on 7 October: the concluding day I went to school. That early hours, warning alarms sounded through the corridors. Some pupils sobbed, others held hands tightly. Our teacher tried to calm us, but even her tone wavered. I remember longing for a ordinary day; teaching, break time, a literary performance. Instead, that day marked the end of my former reality.

Hostilities have claimed innumerable aspects. But the most painful deprivation of all is learning, because it represents the forfeiture of tomorrow.

Now I live with my mother and father, male relatives and female sibling in a crowded shelter in this coastal area. The temporary partitions sway with breezes, failing to insulate. We line up for water and food. Energy access is fantasy and personal space is absent. Optimism seems delicate.

At night, I observe the stars through the gaps of my tent and ponder if my peers see the same sky. Some message me when they can, expressing they miss school and have retained their former exercise books; like relics of a vanished time. I feel guilty because I’ve misplaced all of mine.

I once aspired to pursuing pedagogy to help local youth study, even when circumstances were difficult. Now I aim for being a journalist – to draft, to talk and to show the world what it represents to be a child in the Strip. I want to narrate our accounts of anxiety and deprivation, but also fortitude. Because even amid these conditions, amid fatality and debris, our voices refuse to be silent.

When online access exists, I attempt learning digitally. On other occasions, I go to a modest shelter where helpers educate us arithmetic and Arabic. The instruction is limited – the electricity cuts out or the attacks recommence but in such times, I sense being. I remember who I was: the young woman who loved numbers and poems, who thought knowledge could alter reality.

Hostilities have stolen countless aspects; our residences, schools and families. I mourned my paternal relative, his wife, and their young ones. I said goodbye to my beautiful city, my previous home, which is merely debris now. But the most painful deprivation of all is education, because without it, our prospects disappear.

To the international community, I state this: keep our hopes alive. We seek no sympathy, we want action. The youth merit books, learning environments and safety. Schooling is not a luxury, it is a fundamental entitlement. The territory is not merely devastation; it is minors who still dream beneath the drones at night. It is my story and I will keep drafting, even if all I have left is a damaged writing tool and a fragment of ripped sheet.

'They message: "are you OK, teacher?"'.

An educator, 40, instructor in al-Bureij camp

I have been educating in this area for a substantial period. Originally in a southern city, then in a different town, and now in al-Bureij camp in the middle of the territory. Before the war started, I typically educated six classes of about dozens of learners, hundreds of eager students eager to learn.

Instructing them was my purpose and joy in life, and I still remember the gleam in a learner's look when a knowledge was acquired; the kind of moment every educator cherishes.

I always thought education should be vibrant. My learning environment was a space of recreation, art, and movement. We painted maps, performed past occurrences, and turned lessons into stories.

Merriment always filled the room as inquisitiveness replaced anxiety. Certainly, even before the war, children in Gaza were always scared. My learning environment was a place of safety but after 7 October, everything changed.

My educational institution became a shelter for households fleeing the aerial attacks. Not long later, it was struck and totally demolished. There are hardly any educational facilities remaining intact in the region now. For 24 months, nothing has been normal. The conflict has broken every facet of our existence: safety, dwellings, educational centers, aspirations. Apprehension and mourning are constant companions.

Numerous of my students are now lost – youth who talked about dreaming of medical professionals, artists, and educators. They were denied even the privilege of living. Those who survive experience hunger, relocation and exhaustion – and yet, they still maintain the desire for education.

Sometimes, when the online access enables, I receive messages from a few of them. They message questioning: “Are you safe, teacher?” We share short messages, short lessons, minor flashes of contact amid the disorder. They question if situations will ever revert to standard. I state to them I am uncertain.

All over Gaza, teachers, aid workers and organizations attempt instruction in any feasible location: in shelters, damaged classrooms, or packed refuges. Schooling has become an demonstration of perseverance, a way to declare: “Our presence continues.” And as long as we keep acquiring knowledge, we will persist.

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