'Without education, we lose our future': Palestinian Children and Teachers on 24 Months Without Education.

'Our plea is for action, not compassion'.

Juwayriya Adwan, 12, Khan Younis

For the past 24 months since I was last inside a learning environment. Two years since I heard the start-of-class signal at Khawla Bint al-Azwar school, sat at my desk and participated actively during my preferred subject. At times I still clearly recall the familiar scents and noises: chalk dust, sharpener leftovers, laughter echoing down the halls. But my learning place was destroyed; it was bombed shortly after the war began. My textbooks turned to ash, and companions perished.

I was in the fifth year on 7 October: the last day I entered the school building. That morning, warning alarms sounded through the corridors. Some students wept, others held hands tightly. Our teacher tried to calm us, but even she sounded shaky. I remember hoping for a routine day; instruction, intermission, a poem recital. Instead, that day marked the end of my former reality.

Conflict has stolen countless things. But the most painful deprivation of all is schooling, because it represents the forfeiture of tomorrow.

Now I live with my mother and father, two brothers and sister in a congested safe space in Khan Younis. The temporary partitions move with air currents, providing no climate control. We wait in line for water and food. Power is imaginary and personal space is absent. Optimism seems delicate.

At evening, I observe the celestial bodies through the openings of my shelter and ponder if my peers see the comparable vista. Some reach out when they can, saying they yearn for classes and have kept their former exercise books; like treasures from a lost world. I feel ashamed because I’ve misplaced all of mine.

I once aspired to entering the education field to help local youth acquire knowledge, even when life was hard. Now I aim for being a reporter – to write, to talk and to reveal the world what it signifies to be a child in this region. I want to narrate our accounts of anxiety and deprivation, but also fortitude. Because even amid these conditions, amid fatality and debris, our voices refuse to be silent.

When online access exists, I try to study digitally. Sometimes, I go to a modest shelter where helpers educate us math and Arabic. The lessons are short – the energy supply stops or the attacks recommence 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.

Conflict has claimed innumerable things; our homes, educational institutions and families. I mourned my family member, his wife, and their young ones. I forfeited my beloved urban area, that southern city, which is only ruins now. But the toughest sacrifice of all is learning, because that is the loss of the future itself.

To the international community, I state this: keep our hopes alive. Compassion isn't enough, we require steps. The youth merit books, educational facilities and security. Schooling is not an extravagance, it is a essential privilege. The territory is not only destruction; it is children who persist in hoping under aerial surveillance at darkness. It is my story and I will persist in composing, even if all I have left is a damaged writing tool and a scrap of damaged material.

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

Naglaa Weshah, 40, instructor in al-Bureij camp

I have been instructing in the region for more than a decade. Originally in that urban area, then in a different town, and currently in the central camp in the central Gaza Strip. In pre-conflict times, I used to teach six classes of about fourty pupils per class, almost two hundred forty individuals keen on education.

Educating them was my vocation and delight in existence, and I still recollect the twinkle in a pupil's gaze when a concept was understood; the kind of moment every teacher cherishes.

I always thought learning should be vibrant. My classroom was a space of recreation, creativity, and movement. We created cartographic art, performed past occurrences, and turned lessons into stories.

Joy always permeated the space as interest substituted fear. Certainly, even in earlier times, local youth were always scared. My learning environment was a place of safety but after the seventh, the situation transformed.

My educational institution became a safe haven for relatives escaping the bombs. Soon, it was targeted and entirely ruined. There are almost no schools left standing in this area now. For 24 months, everything has been abnormal. The war has shattered every facet of our existence: protection, residences, learning places, hopes. Fear and grief are ever-present realities.

A significant number of my pupils are now deceased – minors who mentioned dreaming of physicians, painters, and instructors. They were refused even the privilege of living. Those who remain experience hunger, displacement and exhaustion – and nevertheless, they still maintain the will to learn.

Occasionally, when the internet enables, I get in touch with a handful of them. They write asking: “Are you safe, teacher?” We exchange short messages, abbreviated teaching, minor flashes of contact amid the disorder. They inquire if circumstances will ever go back to normal. I inform them I am uncertain.

Across the region, instructors, aid workers and organizations attempt instruction in any feasible location: in temporary structures, damaged classrooms, or crowded shelters. Learning has become an gesture of resistance, a way to say: “Our presence continues.” And so long as we continue learning, we will persist.

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