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LONDON: For the third consecutive year, as students elsewhere grab their backpacks and return to class, children in Gaza carry what little they have left, fleeing from one danger zone to another, their futures uncertain.

Some 660,000 school-age children in Gaza have been deprived of formal education since Oct. 7, 2023, when a Hamas-led attack on southern Israel triggered Israel’s retaliatory war in Gaza, according to the UN agency for Palestinian refugees, UNRWA.

For most Gazan families, survival has eclipsed every other concern. “Families have been uprooted 10, even 15 times. Their main focus is on food, water, clothing and sleep,” Issa Saaba, director of the Canaan Institute of New Pedagogy in Gaza, told Arab News.

More than 90 percent of Gaza’s 2.2 million residents have been displaced multiple times, forced to seek shelter in tents, UNRWA schools, and hospitals — almost all of which have suffered some form of war damage.

Yet amid the devastation, Gaza’s children continue to cling to whatever schooling they can get. “Health and education have never been abandoned,” Saaba said.

“Once there was even a fleeting sense of stability; whether in open fields, partially destroyed homes, or tents along streets and yards, families and local initiatives sought to provide children with some form of schooling.”

Education has long been a cornerstone of Palestinian identity. In 2022, literacy in Palestine surpassed 97 percent, with near parity between men and women, according to Statista.

“Education is prized by Palestinians as a route to a future they’re being denied,” Iyas Al-Qasem, founder and trustee of the UK charity Hope and Play, told Arab News. “But when the genocide intensified, schools were destroyed, robbing children of both education and hope.”

Since the start of the war, Israeli strikes and ground operations have damaged or destroyed more than 95 percent of Gaza’s school buildings, UN figures show.

“Gaza is in ruins. So is its education system,” UNRWA Commissioner-General Philippe Lazzarini wrote in a Sept. 1 post on X. He described Israel’s targeting of educational facilities as “scholasticide.”

Satellite imagery analysis by the UN Satellite Centre in July found that 91.8 percent of Gaza’s schools — 518 out of 564 — will need complete reconstruction or major repairs. Nearly three-quarters have suffered direct hits.

Despite the destruction, grassroots educators have created improvised classrooms. In March 2024, Saaba’s Canaan Institute and Hope and Play established three makeshift schools in Al-Zawaida of the Deir Al-Balah governorate, in Rafah, and in Al-Mawasi, western Khan Younis.

“When some displaced families returned north, a school was set up in tents in northern Gaza City,” Saaba said. “Altogether, we reached 610 students at the elementary level.”

Al-Qasem said such initiatives make a difference. “None of these children live in the conditions we wish for them, but we can still make things better,” he said.

Beyond traditional lessons, the groups launched creative learning programs, including puppet theater, storytelling, sports, and community play days, to offer both education and psychological relief.

“The big mouth puppet theater shows took nearly a month to develop and prepare, with the team working under some of the harshest conditions in a city devastated by destruction,” Saaba said.

“The plays promote values such as tolerance, love, cooperation, honesty, and respect for parents, while also warning children about the dangers of playing with remnants of war.”

He added that the show’s main song “is about rebuilding our destroyed homes with our own hands, full of excitement, fun, and music.”

About 60 performances were held in displacement camps, shelters, courtyards, and streets, reaching roughly 10,000 children and many parents. Another 80 shows, featuring clowns, stilt walkers, and bear mascots, brought laughter and lessons to devastated neighborhoods.

One unlikely initiative even introduced a rollerblading academy in central Gaza.

“They managed to get rollerblades and put a couple of hundred children through the academy,” Al-Qasem said. “You look at their faces and there’s joy — it’s bizarre and powerful to see joy in the midst of what’s going on.”

Such activities, he added, gave both children and instructors “a sense of agency” in a situation where little else was under their control. “They weren’t just at the behest of the bombs; they were actually doing things.”

The courage and dedication of volunteers, Saaba said, was “remarkable.” Despite bombings, famine, and loss, “they showed rare commitment, solidarity and selflessness — examples rarely seen in history.”

In August 2024, the groups held a graduation ceremony in northern Gaza. “Kids waving their certificates in the air amid bombing — an act of both defiance and celebration,” Al-Qasem said.

By then, about 1,000 informal learning centers across Gaza were serving roughly 250,000 students. Many hosted more than 1,000 children each.

But even these acts of hope have not been spared from the violence. In March, 28-year-old artist Dorgham Quraiqi was killed alongside his wife and brothers when an explosion tore through the ruins of their home in Gaza City’s Shuja’iya neighborhood.

“He was our first team member to be killed,” said Al-Qasem. “We also lost a 20-year-old stilt-walking clown who was killed while driving back from a show for kids.

“Everything they do takes place under that shadow. It’s heartbreaking to think about how many of the children who joined our workshops are still alive — and, if alive, what life they now face.”

Save the Children and UN agencies report that more than 20,000 children have been killed since October 2023, with at least 42,000 injured and 21,000 permanently disabled.

James Elder, spokesperson for the UN children’s fund, UNICEF, described witnessing children killed near Al-Aqsa Hospital in Deir Al-Balah. “It was a room full of children, four or five children, all who’d been shot by quadcopters,” he told the news website Zeteo in early October.

The loss of routine, safety and learning has deep psychological impacts on children.

“Schools are one of the strongest protective factors (in war),” Jeeda Alhakim, a specialist counseling psychologist at City, University of London, told Arab News.

“They offer routine, a sense of normalcy, and safe spaces where children can build supportive relationships with teachers and peers.

“When we think about children’s mental health in war, psychologists often talk about risk factors, things like exposure to violence, hunger, or displacement that increase distress, and protective factors — things that buffer against harm.”

Education, Alhakim said, “gives children hope” and reminds them “they are more than the war they are living through.”

But this is the same reason “schools are often deliberately targeted in war — precisely because they symbolize continuity and possibility.”

Attacks on schools “not only disrupt learning but also strip children of a key source of stability and resilience,” she said. “That’s why protecting education in conflict isn’t just about learning, it’s about safeguarding children’s mental health and well-being.”

Alhakim warned that Gaza’s children face overlapping traumas that “don’t just add up, they multiply.” Hunger weakens concentration; displacement severs social ties; disability isolates.

“Each one strains a child’s ability to cope, and when they overlap, the burden becomes much heavier,” she said.

In August, famine was officially declared in parts of Gaza, including Gaza City. More than half a million people are now trapped in conditions of starvation and destitution, according to an Integrated Food Security Phase Classification analysis released in August.

“A child who is hungry, displaced, and living with a disability isn’t just facing three separate problems, they’re facing a web of challenges that reinforce each other,” Alhakim said. “They may be cut off from school, miss out on food support, or find it harder to access safe spaces.”

She cautioned that “this cumulative risk makes mental health difficulties far more likely.”

Hundreds of UN-run schools and learning centers, many used as shelters, have been struck by Israeli airstrikes, according to Human Rights Watch. Israeli officials claim Hamas militants use civilian buildings to stash weapons and to mount attacks but have provided little evidence.

In July, Israeli outlets +972 Magazine and Local Call reported that the Israeli military had formed a “special strike cell” to identify and target schools labeled as “centers of gravity,” allegedly housing Hamas operatives.

The reports described “double tap” strikes — secondary attacks on the same site — as increasingly common.

HRW said it investigated Israeli strikes on the Khadija Girls’ School in Deir Al-Balah on July 27, 2024, which reportedly killed at least 15 people, and on the Al-Zeitoun C School in Gaza City on Sept. 21 that same year, which killed at least 34.

The New York-based rights monitor found no evidence of military activity at either site. It found that in only seven cases did Israel publish the names and photos of alleged combatants said to be present at targeted schools.

After the June 6, 2024, strike on Al-Sardi School, the Israeli military named 17 alleged fighters, but HRW found that three of those individuals had already been reported killed in earlier attacks.

While schools lose protection under international law if used for military purposes, HRW stressed that even then, attacks must not cause disproportionate civilian harm.

UNRWA’s Lazzarini warned that the longer Gaza’s children “stay out of school with their trauma, the higher the risk they become a lost generation, sowing the seeds for more hatred and violence.”

Al-Qasem echoed the concern. “My ambition when I founded Hope and Play was that the charity would cease to function because it was no longer needed — that Palestinian children would have their rights respected and be cared for by the institutions that should be there,” he said. “Sadly, I now think this will be a lifetime’s work.”

He said the group’s next step is to shift “from emergency response to long-term rebuilding,” once the war ends. “A child who has lived through two years of this needs sustained support to create a future.”

Yet peace remains elusive. As Israel tightens its siege on Gaza City, ordering Palestinians on Oct. 1 to evacuate south or be labeled “terrorists and supporters of terror,” the dream of normal classrooms feels further away than ever.

On Oct. 4, US President Donald Trump urged Israel to “immediately stop bombing Gaza,” saying Hamas was “ready for a lasting peace.” The announcement came after the militant group said it had agreed to “immediately” enter negotiations for the release of all hostages.

However, at least 20 Palestinians were killed in Israeli strikes within 12 hours of Trump’s announcement, according to Gaza hospital reports cited by CNN.