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Fear of ‘Lost Generation’ as Gaza School Year Begins with All Classes Shut 

Children write in notebooks by the rubble of destroyed buildings near a tent being used as a make-shift educational center for primary education students in Jabalia in the northern Gaza Strip on September 8, 2024 amid the ongoing war in the Palestinian territory between Israel and Hamas. (AFP)
Children write in notebooks by the rubble of destroyed buildings near a tent being used as a make-shift educational center for primary education students in Jabalia in the northern Gaza Strip on September 8, 2024 amid the ongoing war in the Palestinian territory between Israel and Hamas. (AFP)
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Fear of ‘Lost Generation’ as Gaza School Year Begins with All Classes Shut 

Children write in notebooks by the rubble of destroyed buildings near a tent being used as a make-shift educational center for primary education students in Jabalia in the northern Gaza Strip on September 8, 2024 amid the ongoing war in the Palestinian territory between Israel and Hamas. (AFP)
Children write in notebooks by the rubble of destroyed buildings near a tent being used as a make-shift educational center for primary education students in Jabalia in the northern Gaza Strip on September 8, 2024 amid the ongoing war in the Palestinian territory between Israel and Hamas. (AFP)

The new school year in the Palestinian territories officially began on Monday, with all schools in Gaza shut after 11 months of war and no sign of a ceasefire.

In its ongoing assault on the Palestinian territory, Israel announced new orders to residents of the north Gaza Strip to leave their homes, in response to rockets fired into Israel.

Umm Zaki's son Moataz, 15, was supposed to begin tenth grade. Instead he woke up in their tent in Deir al-Balah in central Gaza and was sent to fetch a container of water from more than a kilometer away.

"Usually, such a day would be a day of celebration, seeing the children in the new uniform, going to school, and dreaming of becoming doctors and engineers. Today all we hope is that the war ends before we lose any of them," the mother of five told Reuters by text message.

The Palestinian Education Ministry said all Gaza schools were shut and 90% of them had been destroyed or damaged in Israel's assault on the territory, launched after Hamas gunmen attacked Israeli towns in October last year.

The UN Palestinian aid agency UNRWA, which runs around half of Gaza's schools, has turned as many of them as it can into emergency shelters housing thousands of displaced families.

"The longer the children stay out of school the more difficult it is for them to catch up on their lost learning and the more prone they are to becoming a lost generation, falling prey to exploitation including child marriage, child labor, and recruitment into armed groups," UNRWA Director of Communications Juliette Touma told Reuters.

In addition to the 625,000 Gazans already registered for school who would be missing classes, another 58,000 six-year-olds should have registered to start first grade this year, the education ministry said.

Last month, UNRWA launched a back-to-learning program in 45 of its shelters, with teachers setting up games, drama, arts, music and sports activities to help with children's mental health.

'THE SPECIFIED AREA HAS BEEN WARNED'

Nearly all of Gaza's 2.3 million people have been forced from their homes at least once, and some have had to flee as many as 10 times.

In the latest evacuation order, Israel told residents of an area in the northern Gaza Strip they must leave their homes, following the firing of rockets into southern Israel the previous day.

"To all those in the specified area. Terrorist organizations are once again firing rockets at the State of Israel and carrying out terrorist acts from this area. The specified area has been warned many times in the past. The specified area is considered a dangerous combat zone," an Israeli military spokesperson said in Arabic on X.

The United Nations urged Palestinians in the northern Gaza Strip to attend medical facilities to get children under the age of 10 years old vaccinated against polio. Limited pauses in fighting have been held to allow the vaccination campaign, which aims to reach 640,000 children in Gaza after the territory's first polio case in around 25 years.

UN officials said the campaign in the southern and central Gaza Strip had so far reached more than half of the children there needing the drops. A second round of vaccination will be required four weeks after the first.

Health officials said on Monday two separate Israeli airstrikes had killed seven people in central Gaza, while another strike killed one man in Khan Younis further south.

The armed wings of Hamas and the Islamic Jihad said they fought against Israeli forces in several areas across the Gaza Strip with anti-tank rockets and mortar fire.

The Israeli military said forces continued to dismantle military infrastructure and killed dozens of fighters in the past days, including senior Hamas and Islamic Jihad commanders.

The war was triggered on Oct. 7 when the Hamas group that ran Gaza attacked Israel, killing 1,200 and taking about 250 hostages, according to Israeli tallies. Israel's subsequent assault on Gaza has killed more than 40,900 Palestinians, according to the enclave's health ministry.

The two warring sides each blame the other for the failure so far to reach a ceasefire that would end the fighting and see the release of hostages.

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As It Attacks Iran's Nuclear Program, Israel Maintains Ambiguity about Its Own

FILE - This file image made from a video aired Friday, Jan. 7, 2005, by Israeli television station Channel 10, shows what the television station claims is Israel's nuclear facility in the southern Israeli town of Dimona, the first detailed video of the site ever shown to the public. (Channel 10 via AP, File)
FILE - This file image made from a video aired Friday, Jan. 7, 2005, by Israeli television station Channel 10, shows what the television station claims is Israel's nuclear facility in the southern Israeli town of Dimona, the first detailed video of the site ever shown to the public. (Channel 10 via AP, File)
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As It Attacks Iran's Nuclear Program, Israel Maintains Ambiguity about Its Own

FILE - This file image made from a video aired Friday, Jan. 7, 2005, by Israeli television station Channel 10, shows what the television station claims is Israel's nuclear facility in the southern Israeli town of Dimona, the first detailed video of the site ever shown to the public. (Channel 10 via AP, File)
FILE - This file image made from a video aired Friday, Jan. 7, 2005, by Israeli television station Channel 10, shows what the television station claims is Israel's nuclear facility in the southern Israeli town of Dimona, the first detailed video of the site ever shown to the public. (Channel 10 via AP, File)

Israel says it is determined to destroy Iran’s nuclear program because its archenemy's furtive efforts to build an atomic weapon are a threat to its existence.

What’s not-so-secret is that for decades Israel has been believed to be the Middle East’s only nation with nuclear weapons, even though its leaders have refused to confirm or deny their existence, The Associated Press said.

Israel's ambiguity has enabled it to bolster its deterrence against Iran and other enemies, experts say, without triggering a regional nuclear arms race or inviting preemptive attacks.

Israel is one of just five countries that aren’t party to a global nuclear nonproliferation treaty. That relieves it of international pressure to disarm, or even to allow inspectors to scrutinize its facilities.

Critics in Iran and elsewhere have accused Western countries of hypocrisy for keeping strict tabs on Iran's nuclear program — which its leaders insist is only for peaceful purposes — while effectively giving Israel's suspected arsenal a free pass.

On Sunday, the US military struck three nuclear sites in Iran, inserting itself into Israel’s effort to destroy Iran’s program.

Here's a closer look at Israel's nuclear program:

A history of nuclear ambiguity Israel opened its Negev Nuclear Research Center in the remote desert city of Dimona in 1958, under the country's first leader, Prime Minister David Ben Gurion. He believed the tiny fledgling country surrounded by hostile neighbors needed nuclear deterrence as an extra measure of security. Some historians say they were meant to be used only in case of emergency, as a last resort.

After it opened, Israel kept the work at Dimona hidden for a decade, telling United States’ officials it was a textile factory, according to a 2022 article in the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, an academic journal.

Relying on plutonium produced at Dimona, Israel has had the ability to fire nuclear warheads since the early 1970s, according to that article, co-authored by Hans M. Kristensen, director of the Nuclear Information Project with the Federation of American Scientists, and Matt Korda, a researcher at the same organization.

Israel's policy of ambiguity suffered a major setback in 1986, when Dimona’s activities were exposed by a former technician at the site, Mordechai Vanunu. He provided photographs and descriptions of the reactor to The Sunday Times of London.

Vanunu served 18 years in prison for treason, and is not allowed to meet with foreigners or leave the country.

ISRAEL POSSESSES DOZENS OF NUCLEAR WARHEADS, EXPERTS SAY

Experts estimate Israel has between 80 and 200 nuclear warheads, although they say the lower end of that range is more likely.

Israel also has stockpiled as much as 1,110 kilograms (2,425 pounds) of plutonium, potentially enough to make 277 nuclear weapons, according to the Nuclear Threat Initiative, a global security organization. It has six submarines believed to be capable of launching nuclear cruise missiles, and ballistic missiles believed to be capable of launching a nuclear warhead up to 6,500 kilometers (4,000 miles), the organization says.

Germany has supplied all of the submarines to Israel, which are docked in the northern city of Haifa, according to the article by Kristensen and Korda.

NUCLEAR WEAPONS IN THE MIDDLE EAST POSE RISKS

In the Middle East, where conflicts abound, governments are often unstable, and regional alliances are often shifting, nuclear proliferation is particularly dangerous, said Or Rabinowitz, a scholar at Jerusalem's Hebrew University and a visiting associate professor at Stanford University.

“When nuclear armed states are at war, the world always takes notice because we don’t like it when nuclear arsenals ... are available for decision makers,” she said.

Rabinowitz says Israel's military leaders could consider deploying a nuclear weapon if they found themselves facing an extreme threat, such as a weapon of mass destruction being used against them.

Three countries other than Israel have refused to sign the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons: India, Pakistan and South Sudan. North Korea has withdrawn. Iran has signed the treaty, but it was censured last week, shortly before Israel launched its operation, by the UN's nuclear watchdog — a day before Israel attacked — for violating its obligations.

Israel's policy of ambiguity has helped it evade greater scrutiny, said Susie Snyder at the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons, a group that works to promote adherence to the UN treaty.

Its policy has also shined a light on the failure of Western countries to rein in nuclear proliferation in the Middle East, she said.

They “prefer not to be reminded of their own complicity,” she said.