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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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Chased Away by Israeli Settlers, These Palestinians Returned to a Village in Ruins

The ruins of a home in the West Bank village of Khirbet Zanuta, destroyed when residents were driven out by Israeli settlers, Tuesday, Aug. 27, 2024. (AP)
The ruins of a home in the West Bank village of Khirbet Zanuta, destroyed when residents were driven out by Israeli settlers, Tuesday, Aug. 27, 2024. (AP)
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Chased Away by Israeli Settlers, These Palestinians Returned to a Village in Ruins

The ruins of a home in the West Bank village of Khirbet Zanuta, destroyed when residents were driven out by Israeli settlers, Tuesday, Aug. 27, 2024. (AP)
The ruins of a home in the West Bank village of Khirbet Zanuta, destroyed when residents were driven out by Israeli settlers, Tuesday, Aug. 27, 2024. (AP)

An entire Palestinian community fled their tiny West Bank village last fall after repeated threats from Israeli settlers with a history of violence. Then, in a rare endorsement of Palestinian land rights, Israel’s highest court ruled this summer the displaced residents of Khirbet Zanuta were entitled to return under the protection of Israeli forces.

But their homecoming has been bittersweet. In the intervening months, nearly all the houses in the village, a health clinic and a school were destroyed — along with the community’s sense of security in the remote desert land where they have farmed and herded sheep for decades.

Roughly 40% of former residents have so far chosen not to return. The 150 or so that have come back are sleeping outside the ruins of their old homes. They say they are determined to rebuild – and to stay – even as settlers once again try to intimidate them into leaving and a court order prevents them from any new construction.

“There is joy, but there are some drawbacks,” said Fayez Suliman Tel, the head of the village council and one of the first to come back to see the ransacked village – roofs seemingly blown off buildings, walls defaced by graffiti.

“The situation is extremely miserable,” Tel said, “but despite that, we are steadfast and staying in our land, and God willing, this displacement will not be repeated.”

The Israeli military body in charge of civilian affairs in the West Bank said in a statement to The Associated Press it had not received any claims of Israeli vandalism of the village, and that it was taking measures to “ensure security and public order” during the villagers’ return.

“The Palestinians erected a number of structural components illegally at the place, and in that regard enforcement proceedings were undertaken in accordance with law,” the statement said.

The villagers of Khirbet Zanuta had long faced harassment and violence from settlers. But after the Oct. 7 attack on Israel by Hamas that launched the war in Gaza, they said they received explicit death threats from Israelis living in an unauthorized outpost up the hill called Meitarim Farm. The outpost is run by Yinon Levi, who has been sanctioned by the US, UK, EU and Canada for menacing his Palestinian neighbors.

The villagers say they reported the threats and attacks to Israeli police, but said they got little help. Fearing for their lives, at the end of October, they packed up whatever they could carry and left.

Though settler violence had been rising even before the war under the far-right government of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, it has been turbocharged ever since Oct. 7. More than 1,500 Palestinians have been displaced by settler violence since then, according to the United Nations, and very few have returned home.

Khirbet Zanuta stands as a rare example. It is unclear if any other displaced community has been granted a court's permission to return since the start of the war.

Even though residents have legal protection Israel's highest court, they still have to contend with Levi and other young men from the Meitarim Farm outpost trying to intimidate them.

Shepherd Fayez Fares Al Samareh, 57, said he returned to Khirbet Zanuta two weeks ago to find that his house had been bulldozed by settlers. The men of his family have joined him in bringing their flocks back home, he said, but conditions in the village are grave.

“The children have not returned and the women as well. Where will they stay? Under the sun?” he said.

Settler surveillance continues: Al Samareh said that every Friday and Saturday, settlers arrive to the village, photographing residents.

Videos taken by human rights activists and obtained by The Associated Press show settlers roaming around Khirbet Zanuta last month, taking pictures of residents as Israeli police look on.

By displacing small villages, rights groups say West Bank settlers like Levi are able to accumulate vast swaths of land, reshaping the map of the occupied territory that Palestinians hope to include in their homeland as part of any two-state solution.

The plight of Khirbet Zanuta is also an example of the limited effectiveness of international sanctions as a means of reducing settler violence in the West Bank. The US recently targeted Hashomer Yosh, a government-funded group that sends volunteers to work on West Bank farms, both legal and illegal, with sanctions. Hashomer Yosh sent volunteers to Levi’s outpost, a Nov. 13 Facebook post said.

“After all 250 Palestinian residents of Khirbet Zanuta were forced to leave, Hashomer Yosh volunteers fenced off the village to prevent the residents from returning,” a US State Department spokesman, Matthew Miller, said last week.

Neither Hashomer Yosh nor Levi responded to a request for comment on intrusions into the village since residents returned. But Levi claimed in a June interview with AP that the land was his, and admitted to taking part in clearing it of Palestinians, though he denied doing so violently.

“Little by little, you feel when you drive on the roads that everyone is closing in on you,” he said at the time. “They’re building everywhere, wherever they want. So you want to do something about it.”

The legal rights guaranteed to Khirbet Zanuta's residents only go so far. Under the terms of the court ruling that allowed them to return, they are forbidden from building new structures across the roughly 1 square kilometer village. The land, the court ruled, is part of an archaeological zone, so any new structures are at risk of demolition.

Distraught but not deterred, the villagers are repairing badly damaged homes, the health clinic and the EU-funded school — by whom, they do not know for sure.

“We will renovate these buildings so that they are qualified to receive students before winter sets in,” Khaled Doudin, the governor of the Hebron region that includes Khirbet Zanuta, said as he stood in the bulldozed school.

“And after that we will continue to rehabilitate it,” he said, “so that we do not give the occupation the opportunity to demolish it again.”