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'We don’t want pity, we want action'.

A young student, twelve, al-Mawasi

For the past 24 months since I stepped into a real classroom. 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. Occasionally I still distinctly recollect the auditory and olfactory sensations: writing residue, pencil shavings, cheerful echoes. But my educational institution is gone; it was bombed not long after the hostilities erupted. My books were burned, and some of my friends killed.

I was in elementary level on that fateful day: the last day I entered the school building. That beginning of the day, warning alarms blared through the passageways. Some children cried, others clasped palms firmly. Our instructor sought to soothe, but even her tone wavered. I remember hoping for a ordinary day; lessons, intermission, a poem recital. Instead, that day marked the end of my old life.

The war has taken so much. But the toughest sacrifice of all is learning, because that is the loss of the future itself.

Now I dwell alongside my parents, two brothers and female sibling in a packed refuge in Khan Younis. The temporary partitions move with air currents, keeping neither cold nor heat away. We queue for sustenance and drinks. Power is imaginary and personal space is absent. Optimism seems delicate.

At night, I observe the stars through the holes of my temporary home and ponder if my peers see the comparable vista. Some contact me when they manage, expressing they miss school and have preserved their previous journals; like treasures from a lost world. I feel ashamed because I’ve misplaced all of mine.

I once aspired to entering the education field to assist Gaza’s children acquire knowledge, even when life was hard. Now I aim for being a writer – to write, to communicate and to reveal the world what it signifies to be a minor in Gaza. I want to tell our stories of anxiety and deprivation, but also bravery. Because even amid these conditions, amid fatality and debris, our voices refuse to be silent.

When there’s some internet, I try to study digitally. Sometimes, I attend a small tent where volunteers educate us math and Arabic. The lessons are short – the energy supply stops or the attacks recommence but in those moments, I feel alive. I recollect who I was: the girl who cherished arithmetic and verse, who believed knowledge could alter reality.

The war has taken so much; our residences, educational institutions and relatives. I lost my family member, his partner, and their children. I lost my beloved urban area, Rafah, which is merely debris now. But the toughest sacrifice of all is learning, because that is the loss of the future itself.

To the international community, I state this: keep our hopes alive. We seek no sympathy, we demand measures. The youth merit books, schools and protection. Schooling is not optional, it is a basic right. This region is not merely devastation; it is children who persist in hoping amid unmanned aircraft at night. It is my account and I will keep drafting, even if the sole items remaining is a damaged writing tool and a fragment of ripped sheet.

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

An educator, forty, instructor in a refugee camp

I have been educating in this area for more than a decade. Originally in Khan Younis, then in another location, and now in this refugee settlement in the middle of the territory. Before the war started, I regularly instructed multiple groups of about dozens of learners, almost two hundred forty individuals keen on education.

Instructing them was my mission and happiness in life, and I still recall the gleam in a learner's look when a concept was understood; the sort of occasion every educator strives for.

I always believed instruction should be dynamic. My classroom was a space of amusement, art, and movement. We painted maps, dramatized bygone episodes, and turned lessons into stories.

Joy always permeated the space as inquisitiveness replaced fear. Indeed, even prior to conflict, young residents were always frightened. My learning environment was a protected zone but after 7 October, the situation transformed.

My educational institution became a shelter for families running from the bombs. Not long later, it was struck and entirely ruined. There are almost no learning institutions still erect in this area now. For two years, all has been unusual. The hostilities has broken every part of our existence: security, dwellings, learning places, hopes. Apprehension and mourning are ever-present realities.

Numerous of my students are now dead – minors who mentioned becoming physicians, painters, and educators. They were refused even the entitlement to survival. Those who remain experience hunger, eviction and weariness – and nevertheless, they still maintain the thirst for knowledge.

Sometimes, when the internet allows, I hear from a handful of them. They contact inquiring: “Are you safe, teacher?” We exchange short messages, miniature instruction, small glimmers of connection amid the disorder. They question if things will ever return to usual. I tell them I am uncertain.

Throughout the region, educators, aid workers and organizations attempt instruction wherever possible: in temporary structures, damaged classrooms, or crowded shelters. Learning has become an gesture of resistance, a way to express: “We persist.” And provided that we keep acquiring knowledge, we will remain.

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