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'Our plea is for action, not compassion'.

Juwayriya Adwan, twelve, Khan Younis

It has been 24 months since I was last inside a real classroom. That long since I heard the school chime at my former school, occupied my place and answered questions during my favourite class. Sometimes I still clearly recall the familiar scents and noises: writing residue, sharpener leftovers, laughter echoing down the halls. But my school no longer exists; it was targeted soon after the conflict started. My books were burned, and some of my friends killed.

I was in elementary level on the seventh of October: the last day I attended classes. That early hours, alert signals screamed through the passageways. Some pupils sobbed, others held hands tightly. Our educator attempted reassurance, but even she sounded shaky. I remember wishing for a routine day; lessons, recess, a verse presentation. Instead, that day became the last page of my former reality.

The war has taken so much. But the hardest loss of all is schooling, because that is the loss of the future itself.

Now I dwell alongside my mother and father, male relatives and sister in a congested safe space in Khan Younis. The tent walls sway with breezes, providing no climate control. We queue for water and food. Electricity is a dream and privacy doesn’t exist. Aspiration appears brittle.

At night, I observe the night lights through the openings of my tent and ponder if my peers see the comparable vista. Some message me when they can, expressing they yearn for classes and have kept their old notebooks; like relics of a vanished time. I feel ashamed because I’ve lost all of mine.

I once aspired to entering the education field to help local youth acquire knowledge, even when circumstances were difficult. Now I hope for being a writer – to draft, to communicate and to reveal the world what it represents to be a young person in Gaza. I want to narrate our accounts of fear and hunger, but also bravery. Because even here, amid death and ruins, our voices refuse to be silent.

When online access exists, I try to study online. Sometimes, I visit a small tent where helpers instruct us mathematics and language. The lessons are short – the electricity cuts out or the bombing resumes but in these instances, I sense being. I recollect who I was: the young woman who loved numbers and poems, who was convinced learning could change the world.

The war has taken so much; our dwellings, educational institutions and kin. I lost my uncle, his partner, and their offspring. I forfeited my beautiful city, Rafah, which is merely debris now. But the toughest sacrifice of all is learning, because without it, our prospects disappear.

To the international community, I express this: keep our hopes alive. Compassion isn't enough, we require steps. Young residents merit literature, schools and security. Learning is not optional, it is a essential privilege. The territory is not just ruins; it is youth who persist in hoping under aerial surveillance at evening. It is my narrative and I will keep drafting, even if my only possessions is a damaged writing tool and a piece of torn paper.

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

An educator, 40, teacher in a refugee camp

I have been teaching in the region for a substantial period. First in a southern city, then in another location, 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, nearly 240 young minds enthusiastic about knowledge.

Teaching them was my purpose and joy in existence, and I still recollect the gleam in a student’s eyes when a new idea clicked; the type of instance every teacher strives for.

I always believed learning should be dynamic. My learning environment was a zone of recreation, art, and movement. We created cartographic art, dramatized bygone episodes, and turned lessons into stories.

Joy always occupied the area as curiosity displaced anxiety. Indeed, even prior to conflict, children in Gaza were always scared. My teaching space was a protected zone but after 7 October, the situation transformed.

My learning center became a refuge for families escaping the bombs. Shortly after, it was attacked and totally demolished. There are very few schools left standing in Gaza now. For two years, everything has been abnormal. The hostilities has shattered every part of our lives: protection, homes, schools, dreams. Fear and grief are ever-present realities.

A significant number of my pupils are now dead – youth who talked about aspiring to be physicians, painters, and teachers. They were denied even the privilege of living. Those who survive live with hunger, relocation and exhaustion – and however, they still hold onto the thirst for knowledge.

Occasionally, when the connectivity enables, I receive messages from a handful of them. They message questioning: “How are you, educator?” We share brief words, abbreviated teaching, small glimmers of interaction amid the turmoil. They question if circumstances will ever revert to standard. I state to them I am uncertain.

Throughout the region, teachers, volunteers and organizations try to teach in all available spaces: in shelters, destroyed learning spaces, or packed refuges. Education has become an gesture of resistance, a way to express: “Our presence continues.” And provided that we continue learning, we will remain.

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