'Without education, we lose our future': Palestinian Children and Educators on Two Years Without School.

'We seek action, not sympathy'.

A young student, twelve, Khan Younis

It has been two years since I entered a learning environment. That long since I listened to the start-of-class signal at Khawla Bint al-Azwar school, sat at my desk and raised my hand during my favourite class. At times I still distinctly recollect the sounds and smells: powder from the board, wooden scraps, joyful sounds in corridors. But my learning place was destroyed; it was targeted soon after the hostilities erupted. My textbooks turned to ash, and companions perished.

I was in the fifth year on that fateful day: the final day I attended classes. That beginning of the day, alert signals screamed through the corridors. Some students wept, others held hands tightly. Our teacher tried to calm us, but even her tone wavered. I remember longing for a routine day; teaching, intermission, a verse presentation. Instead, that day marked the end of my previous existence.

Conflict has stolen countless things. But the hardest loss of all is schooling, because without it, our prospects disappear.

Now I live with my guardians, siblings and sister in a congested safe space in this coastal area. The temporary partitions sway with breezes, keeping neither cold nor heat away. We queue for water and food. Energy access is fantasy and personal space is absent. Aspiration appears brittle.

At evening, I observe the stars through the gaps of my temporary home and wonder if my companions see the comparable vista. Some contact me when they can, expressing they miss school and have kept their former exercise books; like relics of a vanished time. I feel remorseful because I’ve forfeited all of mine.

I once envisioned becoming a teacher to help young residents study, even when life was hard. Now I hope for being a writer – to compose, to communicate and to demonstrate the world what it signifies to be a child in the Strip. I want to share our experiences of fear and hunger, but also fortitude. Because even in this place, amid death and ruins, our expressions persist.

When connectivity is available, I try to study digitally. Other times, I go to a small tent where aid workers educate us math and Arabic. The lessons are short – the power fails or the airstrikes begin again but in these instances, I experience vitality. I remember who I was: the young woman who cherished arithmetic and verse, who was convinced education could transform society.

Conflict has claimed innumerable things; our dwellings, schools and kin. I mourned my paternal relative, his spouse, and their offspring. I said goodbye to my cherished hometown, Rafah, which is nothing but rubble now. But the toughest sacrifice of all is learning, because that is the loss of the future itself.

To the world, I say this: keep our hopes alive. We seek no sympathy, we require steps. The youth deserve texts, schools and security. Learning is not optional, it is a fundamental entitlement. Gaza is not only destruction; it is youth who persist in hoping amid unmanned aircraft at darkness. It is my narrative and I will keep drafting, even if the sole items remaining is a broken pencil and a scrap of damaged material.

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

An educator, 40, teacher in a refugee camp

I have been instructing in Gaza for more than a decade. First in a southern city, then in Deir al-Balah, and presently in this refugee settlement in the middle of the territory. In pre-conflict times, I regularly instructed six classes of about fourty pupils per class, almost two hundred forty individuals keen on education.

Instructing them was my mission and happiness in reality, and I still recollect the gleam in a learner's look when a new idea clicked; the sort of occasion every instructor lives for.

I always was convinced education should be dynamic. My classroom was a space of amusement, aesthetics, and activity. We designed geographical illustrations, acted out historical events, and turned lessons into stories.

Joy always permeated the space as curiosity displaced anxiety. Indeed, even in earlier times, young residents were always scared. My teaching space was a place of safety but after the seventh, all was altered.

My educational institution became a safe haven for families running from the aerial attacks. Not long later, it was struck and totally demolished. There are almost no learning institutions remaining intact in the region now. For 24 months, everything has been abnormal. The hostilities has shattered every part of our lives: security, homes, schools, aspirations. Anxiety and sorrow are constant companions.

A significant number of my pupils are now lost – children who talked about becoming physicians, creatives, and teachers. They were deprived even the right to exist. Those who are still here endure hunger, displacement and fatigue – and however, they still hold onto the desire for education.

Sometimes, when the online access enables, I receive messages from a few of them. They write inquiring: “Are you OK, teacher?” We communicate short messages, short lessons, small glimmers of connection amid the chaos. They ask if things will ever go back to normal. I tell them I am uncertain.

Throughout the region, instructors, aid workers and non-profits try to teach in all available spaces: in shelters, ruined educational areas, or congested safe zones. Learning has become an gesture of resistance, a way to declare: “We are still here.” And as long as we persist in education, we will remain.

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