Gaza's children after two years without schools : Shared by Viviane Sakkal

Children continued lessons in makeshift tents with volunteer teachers

Gaza’s children and teachers on two years without school

Thaslima Begum | The Guardian | October 19 2025
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Summary
With 97 percent of Gaza’s schools destroyed or damaged, some 600,000 children are now entering a third year without formal education. Thaslima Begum’s report for The Guardian gathers first-hand accounts from three students and a teacher who describe the loss of classrooms, safety, and normalcy since October 2023.

Twelve-year-old Juwayriya Adwan studies in a tent and calls education “the loss of the future itself.” Teacher Naglaa Weshah recounts how her school became a shelter before being bombed, forcing lessons into improvised tents. Nine-year-old Sarah al-Sharif mourns classmates and teachers killed, while seven-year-old Ismail Muneifah, now displaced to Cairo, longs to re-enter any classroom. Across Gaza, education has become an act of defiance — a means of survival and hope amid devastation.

Quotes
“The war has taken so much; our homes, schools and families. But the hardest loss of all is education, because that is the loss of the future itself.” — Juwayriya Adwan, 12

“Education has become an act of defiance, a way to say: ‘We are still here.’ And so long as we continue learning, we will remain.” — Naglaa Weshah, teacher

“I miss feeling normal. I miss being a child and a student. I am too young to be a survivor of genocide; if I die, that is not how I want to be remembered.” — Sarah al-Sharif, 9

“The sky was never quiet in Gaza… Slowly, I started forgetting things – words, numbers, even how to spell my name neatly.” — Ismail Muneifah, 7

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