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'We don’t want pity, we want action'.

A young student, 12, Khan Younis

For the past 24 months since I stepped into a learning environment. Two years since I heard the morning bell at the institution I attended, sat at my desk and raised my hand during my preferred subject. Occasionally I still distinctly recollect the familiar scents and noises: chalk dust, pencil shavings, laughter echoing down the halls. But my learning place was destroyed; it was targeted shortly after the war began. My learning materials incinerated, and some of my friends killed.

I was in the fifth year on that fateful day: the final day I entered the school building. That morning, warning alarms blared through the passageways. Some students wept, others gripped each other. Our educator attempted reassurance, but even she sounded shaky. I remember wishing for a normal day; lessons, break time, a verse presentation. Instead, that day marked the end of my previous existence.

Conflict has stolen countless things. But the toughest sacrifice of all is learning, because without it, our prospects disappear.

Now I dwell alongside my mother and father, male relatives and sister in a congested safe space in al-Mawasi. The temporary partitions sway with breezes, failing to insulate. We wait in line for nourishment and hydration. Energy access is fantasy and privacy doesn’t exist. Hope feels fragile.

At darkness, I gaze toward the night lights through the gaps of my shelter and question if my peers see the same sky. Some contact me when they manage, saying they miss school and have preserved their former exercise books; like valuables from a bygone era. I feel remorseful because I’ve misplaced all of mine.

I once dreamed of becoming a teacher to assist young residents learn, even when circumstances were difficult. Now I hope for being a reporter – to compose, to talk and to demonstrate the world what it represents to be a young person in Gaza. I want to narrate our accounts of apprehension and need, but also courage. Because even in this place, amid fatality and debris, our voices refuse to be silent.

When connectivity is available, I attempt learning via the web. On other occasions, I attend a modest shelter where helpers teach us mathematics and language. The instruction is limited – the power fails or the attacks recommence but in those moments, I feel alive. I recall who I was: the girl who cherished arithmetic and verse, who believed education could transform society.

Conflict has claimed innumerable things; our dwellings, educational institutions and kin. I lost my paternal relative, his spouse, and their offspring. I forfeited my beloved urban area, Rafah, which is nothing but rubble now. But the hardest loss of all is schooling, because that is the loss of the future itself.

To the world, I say this: preserve our aspirations. Compassion isn't enough, we demand measures. The youth are entitled to texts, educational facilities and safety. Learning is not a luxury, it is a fundamental entitlement. This region is not just ruins; it is minors who still dream under aerial surveillance at night. It is my narrative and I will continue writing, even if my only possessions is a fractured utensil and a scrap of damaged material.

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

An educator, forty, instructor in central Gaza

I have been teaching in the region for more than a decade. Initially in Khan Younis, then in Deir al-Balah, and presently in this refugee settlement in the heart of the region. Prior to hostilities, I typically educated multiple groups of about fourty pupils per class, hundreds of eager students keen on education.

Teaching them was my mission and happiness in existence, and I still recollect the gleam in a student’s eyes when a knowledge was acquired; the type of instance every teacher strives for.

I always thought education should be full of life. My teaching space was a zone of recreation, art, and motion. We painted maps, performed past occurrences, and transformed instruction into narratives.

Joy always occupied the area as curiosity replaced fear. Indeed, even before the war, children in Gaza were always frightened. My learning environment was a secure location but after the seventh, everything changed.

My school became a refuge for relatives running from the explosives. Shortly after, it was struck and completely destroyed. There are very few learning institutions still erect in the region now. For 24 months, everything has been abnormal. The conflict has broken every part of our lives: security, dwellings, learning places, hopes. Apprehension and mourning are ever-present realities.

Many of my students are now deceased – youth who mentioned aspiring to be doctors, painters, and educators. They were refused even the right to exist. Those who remain experience hunger, relocation and fatigue – and yet, they still hold onto the thirst for knowledge.

Occasionally, when the online access permits, I receive messages from a handful of them. They message asking: “Are you safe, teacher?” We communicate brief words, miniature instruction, small glimmers of connection amid the disorder. They inquire if situations will ever return to usual. I state to them I have no answer.

Across Gaza, teachers, helpers and non-profits endeavor education in any feasible location: in tents, ruined educational areas, or packed refuges. Schooling has become an act of defiance, a way to say: “We persist.” And provided that we keep acquiring knowledge, we will remain.

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