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'Our plea is for action, not compassion'.

A young student, 12, al-Mawasi

It has been two years since I entered a learning environment. Two years since I listened to the start-of-class signal at Khawla Bint al-Azwar school, occupied my place and raised my hand during my favourite class. Occasionally I still vividly remember the auditory and olfactory sensations: powder from the board, pencil shavings, laughter echoing down the halls. But my educational institution is gone; it was struck soon after the war began. My learning materials incinerated, and several classmates lost.

I was in fifth grade on 7 October: the final day I entered the school building. That early hours, air raid sirens sounded through the passageways. Some students wept, others clasped palms firmly. Our teacher tried to calm us, but even her voice trembled. I remember wishing for a normal day; lessons, break time, a poem recital. Instead, that day became the last page of my former reality.

The war has taken so much. But the most painful deprivation of all is schooling, because without it, our prospects disappear.

Now I dwell alongside my parents, two brothers and sister in a congested safe space in Khan Younis. The temporary partitions move with air currents, keeping neither cold nor heat away. We queue for sustenance and drinks. Energy access is fantasy and seclusion is unavailable. Optimism seems delicate.

At night, I gaze toward the night lights through the openings of my tent and question if my companions see the same sky. Some contact me when they can, stating they miss school and have retained their old notebooks; like treasures from a lost world. I feel remorseful because I’ve lost all of mine.

I once envisioned entering the education field to support local youth learn, even when existence was challenging. Now I dream of being a writer – to compose, to talk and to reveal the world what it represents to be a young person in this region. I want to share our experiences of apprehension and need, but also bravery. Because even here, amid death and ruins, our words continue.

When online access exists, I try to study digitally. Other times, I visit a tiny space where helpers teach us arithmetic and Arabic. The instruction is limited – the power fails or the airstrikes begin again but in these instances, I feel alive. I recollect who I was: the student who loved numbers and poems, who thought knowledge could alter reality.

The war has taken so much; our residences, educational institutions and kin. I lost my paternal relative, his wife, and their young ones. I lost my cherished hometown, my previous home, 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 world, I express this: keep our hopes alive. Compassion isn't enough, we want action. Young residents are entitled to books, educational facilities and protection. Schooling is not a luxury, it is a fundamental entitlement. This region is not just ruins; it is minors who persist in hoping under aerial surveillance at darkness. It is my story and I will continue writing, even if all I have left is a fractured utensil and a fragment of ripped sheet.

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

An educator, forty, teacher in al-Bureij camp

I have been teaching in the region for more than a decade. Initially in that urban area, then in another location, and now in this refugee settlement in the heart of the region. In pre-conflict times, I regularly instructed six classes of about dozens of learners, almost two hundred forty individuals enthusiastic about knowledge.

Educating them was my purpose and joy in existence, and I still recollect the twinkle in a learner's look when a knowledge was acquired; the type of instance every instructor strives for.

I always thought instruction should be full of life. My classroom was a zone of amusement, aesthetics, and motion. We created cartographic art, dramatized bygone episodes, and converted teaching into tales.

Laughter always occupied the area as inquisitiveness replaced anxiety. Yes, even prior to conflict, children in Gaza were always afraid. My classroom was a protected zone but after 7 October, the situation transformed.

My learning center became a shelter for families running from the explosives. Soon, it was struck and totally demolished. There are almost no learning institutions still erect in the region now. For 24 months, everything has been abnormal. The conflict has shattered every facet of our existence: security, residences, educational centers, hopes. Anxiety and sorrow are ever-present realities.

Numerous of my pupils are now dead – children who spoke of aspiring to be physicians, creatives, and educators. They were refused even the entitlement to survival. Those who survive endure malnutrition, relocation and exhaustion – and yet, they still cling to the desire for education.

Occasionally, when the online access permits, I hear from a few of them. They write questioning: “How are you, instructor?” We exchange concise phrases, short lessons, small glimmers of connection amid the turmoil. They inquire if situations will ever revert to standard. I inform them I am uncertain.

Across Gaza, instructors, volunteers and charities endeavor education wherever possible: in temporary structures, destroyed learning spaces, or packed refuges. Learning has become an gesture of resistance, a way to express: “We persist.” And as long as we keep acquiring knowledge, we will persist.

A significant number of us are also caregivers. I am a guardian of {three|several