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'We seek action, not sympathy'.

Juwayriya Adwan, 12, Khan Younis

For the past 24 months since I was last inside a learning environment. Two years since I listened to the start-of-class signal at Khawla Bint al-Azwar school, sat at my desk and participated actively during my favourite class. Sometimes I still distinctly recollect the sounds and smells: chalk dust, wooden scraps, joyful sounds in corridors. But my school no longer exists; it was targeted shortly after the conflict started. My books were burned, and companions perished.

I was in fifth grade on that fateful day: the concluding day I entered the school building. That early hours, air raid sirens screamed through the passageways. Some students wept, others gripped each other. Our instructor sought to soothe, but even her tone wavered. I remember wishing for a ordinary day; instruction, recess, a poem recital. Instead, that day became the last page of my former reality.

Hostilities have claimed innumerable aspects. But the toughest sacrifice of all is learning, because it represents the forfeiture of tomorrow.

Now I live with my guardians, siblings and female sibling in a congested safe space in Khan Younis. The shelter coverings sway with breezes, providing no climate control. We queue for water and food. Energy access is fantasy and privacy doesn’t exist. Aspiration appears brittle.

At darkness, I gaze toward the night lights through the holes of my shelter and question if my friends see the identical heavens. Some contact me when they can, stating they long for education and have preserved their previous journals; like relics of a vanished time. I feel remorseful because I’ve misplaced all of mine.

I once dreamed of becoming a teacher to assist local youth learn, 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 young person in the Strip. I want to share our experiences of fear and hunger, but also fortitude. Because even here, amid death and ruins, our voices refuse to be silent.

When connectivity is available, I endeavor to educate myself digitally. On other occasions, I visit a modest shelter where volunteers educate us math and Arabic. The lessons are short – the power fails or the attacks recommence but in those moments, I experience vitality. I recollect who I was: the girl who cherished arithmetic and verse, who thought knowledge could alter reality.

Hostilities have stolen countless aspects; our homes, schools and families. I lost my uncle, his partner, and their young ones. I forfeited my cherished hometown, my previous home, which is merely debris now. But the most painful deprivation of all is education, because that is the loss of the future itself.

To the international community, I state this: keep our hopes alive. We don’t want pity, we require steps. Young residents are entitled to literature, schools and protection. Schooling is not a luxury, it is a fundamental entitlement. This region is not only destruction; it is minors who persist in hoping beneath the drones at evening. It is my narrative and I will continue writing, even if my only possessions is a broken pencil and a scrap of damaged material.

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

An educator, forty, instructor in al-Bureij camp

I have been educating in the region for a substantial period. Initially in a southern city, then in another location, and presently in this refugee settlement in the central Gaza Strip. Before the war started, I typically educated multiple groups of about dozens of learners, hundreds of eager students eager to learn.

Teaching them was my purpose and joy in reality, and I still recollect the sparkle in a pupil's gaze when a knowledge was acquired; the sort of occasion every teacher lives for.

I always believed learning should be full of life. My teaching space was a space of play, aesthetics, and movement. We created cartographic art, acted out historical events, and transformed instruction into narratives.

Joy always permeated the space as inquisitiveness substituted fear. Indeed, even before the war, children in Gaza were always afraid. My learning environment was a protected zone but after the seventh, everything changed.

My educational institution became a refuge for families fleeing the bombs. Not long later, it was struck and entirely ruined. There are hardly any learning institutions remaining intact in Gaza now. For two years, everything has been abnormal. The hostilities has broken every part of our lives: safety, dwellings, educational centers, aspirations. Fear and grief are ever-present realities.

Numerous of my students are now deceased – minors who spoke of becoming medical professionals, creatives, and instructors. They were refused even the right to exist. Those who remain live with starvation, eviction and fatigue – and however, they still hold onto the thirst for knowledge.

Occasionally, when the connectivity permits, I get in touch with a small number of them. They contact asking: “Are you OK, teacher?” We exchange short messages, miniature instruction, small glimmers of contact amid the chaos. They ask if things will ever return to usual. I tell them I am uncertain.

All over this territory, educators, helpers and charities try to teach in any feasible location: in tents, destroyed learning spaces, 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.

Many of us are also parents. I am a guardian of {three|several