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'We don’t want pity, we want action'.

Juwayriya Adwan, twelve, al-Mawasi

It has been two years since I entered a learning environment. That long since I listened to the morning bell at Khawla Bint al-Azwar school, sat at my desk and answered questions during my preferred subject. Sometimes I still distinctly recollect the auditory and olfactory sensations: writing residue, pencil shavings, joyful sounds in corridors. But my educational institution is gone; it was targeted not long after the war began. My textbooks turned to ash, and several classmates lost.

I was in the fifth year on that fateful day: the concluding day I attended classes. That morning, air raid sirens screamed through the halls. Some children cried, others held hands tightly. Our instructor sought to soothe, but even her tone wavered. I remember hoping for a routine day; instruction, recess, a poem recital. Instead, that day became the last page of my old life.

Conflict has stolen countless things. But the hardest loss of all is education, because it represents the forfeiture of tomorrow.

Now I reside with my guardians, two brothers and sister in a crowded shelter in Khan Younis. The temporary partitions sway with breezes, keeping neither cold nor heat away. We line up for sustenance and drinks. Electricity is a dream and seclusion is unavailable. Aspiration appears brittle.

At evening, I look up at the night lights through the gaps of my shelter and question if my peers see the comparable vista. Some reach out when they manage, expressing they long for education and have preserved their previous journals; like relics of a vanished time. I feel remorseful because I’ve lost all of mine.

I once aspired to pursuing pedagogy to assist local youth acquire knowledge, even when life was hard. Now I aim for being a writer – to draft, to communicate and to reveal the world what it signifies to be a child in Gaza. I want to narrate our accounts of apprehension and need, but also courage. Because even amid these conditions, amid fatality and debris, our words continue.

When connectivity is available, I try to study online. On other occasions, I attend a modest shelter where volunteers teach us math and Arabic. The sessions are brief – the electricity cuts out or the bombing resumes but in such times, I sense being. I recall who I was: the young woman who cherished arithmetic and verse, who believed education could transform society.

Hostilities have stolen countless aspects; our dwellings, schools and kin. I lost my family member, his spouse, and their young ones. I forfeited my beloved urban area, that southern city, which is merely debris now. But the hardest loss of all is education, because that is the loss of the future itself.

To the world, I say this: keep our hopes alive. We seek no sympathy, we demand measures. Gaza’s children merit literature, schools and protection. Education is not a luxury, it is a fundamental entitlement. The territory is not merely devastation; it is children who still dream amid unmanned aircraft at evening. It is my story and I will persist in composing, even if my only possessions is a broken pencil and a fragment of ripped sheet.

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

Naglaa Weshah, 40, teacher in al-Bureij camp

I have been instructing in Gaza for more than a decade. First in that urban area, then in Deir al-Balah, and currently in al-Bureij camp in the heart of the region. Prior to hostilities, I used to teach several sets of about fourty pupils per class, hundreds of eager students enthusiastic about knowledge.

Instructing them was my mission and happiness in reality, and I still recall the twinkle in a pupil's gaze when a concept was understood; the sort of occasion every teacher lives for.

I always believed education should be dynamic. My learning environment was a space of play, art, and motion. We painted maps, performed past occurrences, and converted teaching into tales.

Merriment always occupied the area as interest substituted fear. Indeed, even in earlier times, young residents were always frightened. My classroom was a secure location but after the seventh, everything changed.

My school became a safe haven for families fleeing the aerial attacks. Shortly after, it was struck and completely destroyed. There are hardly any learning institutions remaining intact in the region now. For two years, everything has been abnormal. The conflict has shattered every aspect of our existence: safety, residences, educational centers, hopes. Fear and grief are constant companions.

Numerous of my students are now dead – children who mentioned dreaming of doctors, artists, and educators. They were refused even the privilege of living. Those who are still here experience malnutrition, eviction and exhaustion – and yet, they still maintain the thirst for knowledge.

At times, when the connectivity allows, I get in touch with a few of them. They message questioning: “Are you OK, teacher?” We exchange short messages, miniature instruction, small glimmers of contact amid the turmoil. They inquire if situations will ever return to usual. I state to them I have no answer.

Throughout the region, instructors, volunteers and non-profits attempt instruction wherever possible: in shelters, destroyed learning spaces, or packed refuges. Learning has become an act of defiance, a way to declare: “We persist.” And so long as we keep acquiring knowledge, we will persist.

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