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'We don’t want pity, we want action'.

Juwayriya Adwan, 12, al-Mawasi

For the past two years since I was last inside a learning environment. Two years since I listened to the school chime at Khawla Bint al-Azwar school, sat at my desk and answered questions during my preferred subject. At times I still distinctly recollect the auditory and olfactory sensations: writing residue, wooden scraps, joyful sounds in corridors. But my school no longer exists; it was targeted shortly after the conflict started. My textbooks turned to ash, and companions perished.

I was in fifth grade on that fateful day: the last day I went to school. That early hours, warning alarms sounded through the passageways. Some pupils sobbed, others gripped each other. Our educator attempted reassurance, but even she sounded shaky. I remember longing for a ordinary day; lessons, recess, a literary performance. Instead, that day signaled the conclusion of my old life.

The war has taken so much. But the toughest sacrifice of all is education, because it represents the forfeiture of tomorrow.

Now I dwell alongside my parents, male relatives and female sibling in a packed refuge in this coastal area. The temporary partitions sway with breezes, keeping neither cold nor heat away. We line up for nourishment and hydration. Electricity is a dream and seclusion is unavailable. Hope feels fragile.

At darkness, I look up at the celestial bodies through the openings of my tent and question if my peers see the comparable vista. Some reach out when they manage, saying they miss school and have retained their former exercise books; 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 young residents study, even when life was hard. Now I hope for being a reporter – to write, to talk and to demonstrate the world what it represents to be a minor in the Strip. I want to narrate our accounts of fear and hunger, but also courage. Because even here, amid death and ruins, our expressions persist.

When connectivity is available, I endeavor to educate myself via the web. Other times, I go to a modest shelter where volunteers teach us arithmetic and Arabic. The sessions are brief – the power fails or the airstrikes begin again but in such times, I feel alive. I recollect who I was: the young woman who loved numbers and poems, who thought learning could change the world.

The war has taken so much; our residences, educational institutions and relatives. I grieved for my paternal relative, his partner, and their children. I forfeited my beloved urban area, my previous home, which is only ruins now. But the hardest loss of all is learning, because without it, our prospects disappear.

To the international community, I say this: keep our hopes alive. We don’t want pity, we demand measures. The youth deserve texts, learning environments and safety. Learning is not a luxury, it is a basic right. The territory is not merely devastation; it is children who continue to aspire beneath the drones at night. It is my account and I will persist in composing, even if my only possessions is a broken pencil and a piece of torn paper.

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

An educator, 40, teacher in al-Bureij camp

I have been instructing in the region for over ten years. Initially in a southern city, then in a different town, and presently in the central camp in the heart of the region. Prior to hostilities, I used to teach multiple groups of about dozens of learners, nearly 240 young minds eager to learn.

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

I always was convinced education should be full of life. My teaching space was a area of play, aesthetics, and motion. We painted maps, acted out historical events, and transformed instruction into narratives.

Joy always filled the room as inquisitiveness replaced anxiety. Certainly, even prior to conflict, local youth were always frightened. My classroom was a protected zone but after 7 October, everything changed.

My learning center became a shelter for households running from the bombs. Soon, it was attacked and completely destroyed. There are almost no learning institutions remaining intact in this area now. For two years, everything has been abnormal. The war has destroyed every part of our existence: safety, homes, learning places, hopes. Anxiety and sorrow are ever-present realities.

A significant number of my pupils are now lost – minors who spoke of aspiring to be doctors, painters, and instructors. They were denied even the entitlement to survival. Those who remain experience hunger, displacement and exhaustion – and yet, they still hold onto the will to learn.

Sometimes, when the connectivity enables, I hear from a handful of them. They contact inquiring: “Are you safe, educator?” We exchange concise phrases, short lessons, small glimmers of contact amid the turmoil. They inquire if circumstances will ever return to usual. I state to them I am uncertain.

All over this territory, teachers, aid workers and organizations attempt instruction in all available spaces: in tents, destroyed learning spaces, or congested safe zones. Schooling has become an act of defiance, a way to say: “Our presence continues.” And as long as we keep acquiring knowledge, we will remain.

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