Gaza’s children have missed 2 years of school. A truce won’t undo the damage
KHAN YOUNIS Gaza Strip AP Two years ago Sarah Qanan was a star high school attendee preparing for final exams and dreaming of becoming a medical professional The present day the -year-old lives in a sweltering tent in the Gaza Strip and says she is just trying to stay alive She s part of a generation of Palestinians from grade school through university who have had virtually no access to tuition in the territory since the war began in October Classes were suspended that month and schools were transformed into crowded shelters as hundreds of thousands fled their homes at the start of Israel s campaign of retaliation after Hamas Oct attack The closure of schools has removed a key social outlet for young people as they grapple with war hunger and displacement For younger children it has meant missing out on basic skills like reading and simple arithmetic For older students advanced subjects graduation exams and college applications have all been put on hold Even if negotiations lead to another ceasefire it s unclear when anything in Gaza will be rebuilt Vast areas have been utterly destroyed and the U N children s agency estimates that nearly of schools will need substantial reconstruction before they can function again Like plenty of in Gaza Qanan s family has been displaced multiple times and is now living in a tent When an Israeli airstrike destroyed their home in early she dug through the rubble in search of her books but there was nothing left My sole dream was to inquiry medicine Qanan disclosed I stopped thinking about it All my thoughts now are about how to survive Hundreds of thousands out of school More than students have had no access to learning since the start of the war according to the U N children s agency UNICEF That includes nearly students who were unable to take university entry exams that largely determine their career prospects It s the first time in decades that the exams were not administered in Gaza Israel s bombardment and ground operations have killed tens of thousands of Palestinians and displaced of Gaza s population School-age children in crowded shelters and tent camps are often forced to help their families find food water and firewood A complete Israeli blockade imposed in early March that was only slightly eased months later has driven the territory to the brink of famine Local training leaders working with UNICEF and other aid groups set up hundreds of learning spaces to try and provide coaching during the war We re trying to salvage what we can of the educational process so that the next generation doesn t slip through our fingers stated Mohamed al-Asouli head of the instruction department in the southern city of Khan Younis During a six-week ceasefire in January and February several learning spaces provided lessons for around children according to UNICEF But since March when Israel ended the truce with a surprise bombardment nearly half have shut down The impact goes beyond learning losses explained Rosalia Bollen a UNICEF spokeswoman Children in Gaza have been trapped in a cycle not just of exposure to unprecedented violence but also a cycle of fear of toxic stress of anxiety Two years of my life are gone Specific have tried to continue their studies through online learning but it s not easy in Gaza where there has been no central electricity since the start of the war Palestinians must use solar panels or hard-to-find generators to charge their phones and internet is unreliable The mobile phone is not dependably charged and we only have one at home mentioned Nesma Zouaroub a mother of four school-age children She noted her youngest son should be in second grade but does not know how to read or write The children s future is ruined she reported Ola Shaban tried to continue her civil engineering studies online through her university after the campus was destroyed by Israeli forces in April She had to walk long distances to get a signal in her hometown near Khan Younis and she eventually gave up I couldn t continue because of lack of internet continuous displacement and the constant sense of fear she noted Two years of my life are gone Israel s offensive has killed over Palestinians according to Gaza s Healthcare Ministry The ministry which is part of the Hamas-run ruling body does not differentiate between combatants and civilians but says over half the dead are women and children Its figures are used by the U N and other international organizations as the preponderance reliable statistics on war casualties Hamas-led militants killed specific people in the Oct attack and abducted They are still holding hostages less than half deduced to be alive after the greater part of the rest were published in ceasefire deals or other agreements Qanan s father Ibrahim a local journalist revealed his family did everything it could to aid Sarah s ambition to review medicine only to see it go up in smoke when the war broke out The war stunned us and turned our life upside down the father of six revealed Our dreams and hopes were buried in the rubble of our home Magdy stated from Cairo Follow AP s war coverage at https apnews com hub israel-hamas-war Source
