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'Our plea is for action, not compassion'.

A young student, twelve, Khan Younis

For the past two years since I entered a proper school. That long since I heard the start-of-class signal at my former school, took my seat and participated actively during my favourite class. Occasionally I still distinctly recollect the sounds and smells: writing residue, wooden scraps, laughter echoing down the halls. But my learning place was destroyed; it was targeted shortly after the war began. My books were burned, and companions perished.

I was in the fifth year on 7 October: the last day I entered the school building. That morning, warning alarms screamed through the corridors. Some students wept, others clasped palms firmly. Our educator attempted reassurance, but even her tone wavered. I remember hoping for a routine day; instruction, recess, a literary performance. Instead, that day marked the end of my former reality.

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

Now I live with my mother and father, siblings and female sibling in a congested safe space in Khan Younis. The temporary partitions sway with breezes, providing no climate control. We wait in line for sustenance and drinks. Electricity is a dream and personal space is absent. Aspiration appears brittle.

At evening, I observe the celestial bodies through the openings of my temporary home and question if my companions see the same sky. Some contact me when they manage, saying they long for education and have kept their previous journals; like relics of a vanished time. I feel guilty because I’ve misplaced all of mine.

I once dreamed of becoming a teacher to assist Gaza’s children learn, even when existence was challenging. Now I hope for being a writer – to write, to communicate and to show the world what it signifies to be a child in Gaza. I want to narrate our accounts of apprehension and need, but also fortitude. Because even in this place, amid fatality and debris, our voices refuse to be silent.

When online access exists, I try to study digitally. Sometimes, I attend a tiny space where helpers instruct us arithmetic and Arabic. The lessons are short – the power fails or the bombing resumes but in those moments, I feel alive. I recollect who I was: the student who adored mathematics and poetry, who thought knowledge could alter reality.

The war has taken so much; our residences, educational institutions and kin. I lost my family member, his wife, and their children. I forfeited my beloved urban area, my previous home, 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 express this: don’t let our dreams die. We don’t want pity, we require steps. Young residents are entitled to literature, learning environments and protection. Education is not an extravagance, it is a basic right. Gaza is not just ruins; it is children who persist in hoping amid unmanned aircraft at night. It is my account and I will persist in composing, even if my only possessions is a damaged writing tool and a scrap of damaged material.

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

An educator, forty, instructor in central Gaza

I have been teaching in the region for more than a decade. First in Khan Younis, then in a different town, and currently in this refugee settlement in the heart of the region. In pre-conflict times, I regularly instructed multiple groups of about 40 students each, hundreds of eager students enthusiastic about knowledge.

Teaching them was my purpose and joy in existence, and I still recollect the gleam in a pupil's gaze when a knowledge was acquired; the kind of moment every teacher strives for.

I always believed instruction should be vibrant. My teaching space was a zone of amusement, art, and movement. We created cartographic art, dramatized bygone episodes, and transformed instruction into narratives.

Joy always filled the room as interest replaced apprehension. Indeed, even prior to conflict, local youth were always scared. My teaching space was a protected zone but after 7 October, everything changed.

My learning center became a shelter for relatives running from the bombs. Soon, it was struck and completely destroyed. There are almost no educational facilities left standing in the region now. For 24 months, everything has been abnormal. The hostilities has broken every facet of our reality: security, residences, schools, hopes. Fear and grief are ever-present realities.

A significant number of my pupils are now lost – minors who talked about dreaming of medical professionals, creatives, and instructors. They were refused even the privilege of living. Those who remain live with starvation, relocation and weariness – and yet, they still hold onto the thirst for knowledge.

Sometimes, when the connectivity enables, I receive messages from a handful of them. They contact inquiring: “Are you OK, educator?” We share short messages, short lessons, minor flashes of contact amid the chaos. They inquire if situations will ever return to usual. I state to them I don’t know.

Across the region, teachers, aid workers and organizations try to teach in all available spaces: in shelters, ruined educational areas, or crowded shelters. Schooling has become an gesture of resistance, a way to declare: “We are still here.” And as long as we continue learning, we will remain.

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