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'Our plea is for action, not compassion'.

A young student, twelve, a temporary shelter

It has been 24 months since I entered a learning environment. Two years since I listened to the morning bell at the institution I attended, occupied my place and participated actively during my favourite class. At times I still distinctly recollect the familiar scents and noises: powder from the board, wooden scraps, joyful sounds in corridors. But my school no longer exists; it was targeted soon after the conflict started. My learning materials incinerated, and several classmates lost.

I was in the fifth year on the seventh of October: the last day I attended classes. That morning, warning alarms screamed through the passageways. Some pupils sobbed, others clasped palms firmly. Our instructor sought to soothe, but even her voice trembled. I remember hoping for a routine day; instruction, break time, a verse presentation. Instead, that day marked the end of my previous existence.

The war has taken so much. But the hardest loss of all is education, because without it, our prospects disappear.

Now I live with my mother and father, siblings and sister in a congested safe space in Khan Younis. The tent walls flap in the wind, failing to insulate. We line up for sustenance and drinks. Energy access is fantasy and personal space is absent. Hope feels fragile.

At evening, I look up at the celestial bodies through the holes of my temporary home and ponder if my friends see the identical heavens. Some contact me when they manage, expressing they yearn for classes and have preserved their previous journals; like relics of a vanished time. I feel guilty because I’ve forfeited all of mine.

I once dreamed of entering the education field to assist Gaza’s children acquire knowledge, even when existence was challenging. Now I aim for being a writer – to write, to speak and to reveal the world what it represents to be a young person in this region. I want to narrate our accounts of anxiety and deprivation, but also courage. Because even in this place, amid death and ruins, our words continue.

When online access exists, I endeavor to educate myself via the web. On other occasions, I go to a tiny space where volunteers instruct us math and Arabic. The lessons are short – the energy supply stops or the bombing resumes but in these instances, I feel alive. I remember who I was: the young woman who adored mathematics and poetry, who thought education could transform society.

Conflict has claimed innumerable things; our residences, schools and kin. I lost my uncle, his wife, and their young ones. I forfeited my beautiful city, my previous home, which is merely debris now. But the toughest sacrifice of all is learning, because it represents the forfeiture of tomorrow.

To the global audience, I state this: keep our hopes alive. We seek no sympathy, we demand measures. Young residents merit literature, learning environments and security. Schooling is not optional, it is a essential privilege. The territory is not only destruction; it is youth who persist in hoping amid unmanned aircraft at night. It is my narrative and I will persist in composing, even if the sole items remaining is a damaged writing tool and a fragment of ripped sheet.

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

An educator, 40, instructor in a refugee camp

I have been educating in Gaza for a substantial period. First in Khan Younis, then in Deir al-Balah, and currently in this refugee settlement in the middle of the territory. In pre-conflict times, I used to teach several sets of about 40 students each, hundreds of eager students eager to learn.

Educating them was my purpose and joy in life, and I still recollect the gleam in a student’s eyes when a new idea clicked; the type of instance every instructor cherishes.

I always believed instruction should be dynamic. My teaching space was a space of play, aesthetics, and activity. We designed geographical illustrations, performed past occurrences, and converted teaching into tales.

Merriment always occupied the area as curiosity substituted fear. Indeed, even in earlier times, children in Gaza were always frightened. My teaching space was a place of safety but after 7 October, all was altered.

My school became a shelter for relatives fleeing the aerial attacks. Shortly after, it was struck and entirely ruined. There are almost no learning institutions remaining intact in Gaza now. For two years, nothing has been normal. The hostilities has destroyed every facet of our existence: safety, dwellings, learning places, hopes. Anxiety and sorrow are ever-present realities.

Many of my students are now deceased – minors who spoke of aspiring to be physicians, artists, and instructors. They were denied even the privilege of living. Those who survive endure hunger, relocation and exhaustion – and however, they still hold onto the thirst for knowledge.

Sometimes, when the connectivity enables, I hear from a small number of them. They message questioning: “Are you OK, teacher?” We exchange brief words, short lessons, minor flashes of contact amid the disorder. They ask if things will ever go back to normal. I state to them I have no answer.

All over Gaza, instructors, aid workers and organizations try to teach wherever possible: in temporary structures, destroyed learning spaces, or congested safe zones. Schooling has become an demonstration of perseverance, a way to say: “We persist.” And so long as we continue learning, we will persist.

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