Tasneem Safi, 29, spends long hours with her five-year old daughter Layan, striving to teach her some of the basics of the Arabic language and mathematics, and repeating to her some of the lessons that she was receiving in kindergarten until just two days before the outbreak of the Israeli war on the Gaza Strip on Oct. 7.
The war broke out only three weeks after the start of the new school year in the Palestinian territories.
Safi is one of thousands of mothers who are trying to make up for the educational gap incurred by their children in the current school year, if they were “lucky” enough to move to a safer place.
“I teach her letters, numbers, words, and simple mathematical problems. Her school journey cannot begin late,” Safi told Asharq Al-Awsat.
But the circumstances imposed by the war on Gaza do not make even these attempts successful.
Safi faces many life problems like other residents of the Gaza Strip, with interruptions in electricity, water, and food supplies, and living under bombardment, killing, and destruction.
She says her daughter always asks her where she will study after Israel destroyed the kindergarten she used to attend in the Al-Nasr neighborhood in the northern Gaza Strip, and enquires about her friends as well.
“Children grow up prematurely. They think about difficult and complex things, not ABC. I feel like they are lost. I don’t know when or how they will return to education,” she remarked.
During the current war on the Gaza Strip, Israel bombed universities, schools, and kindergartens of all kinds, whether they were private or belonged to the government or to UNRWA, as part of a strategy that many residents saw as also aiming to deprive an entire generation of education.
UN experts said that the ongoing harsh attacks on educational infrastructure in the Gaza Strip have a devastating, long-term impact on the population’s basic rights to learn and express themselves, depriving another generation of Palestinians of their future.
Since the outbreak of the war, at least 625,000 students were forced to abandon the academic year, while Israel killed more than 5,479 students, 261 teachers, and 95 university professors, and injured more than 7,819 students and 756 teachers.
According to international and local statistics, 80 percent of schools in Gaza were destroyed, which indicates a deliberate attempt to comprehensively destroy the Palestinian education system, an act described as “educational genocide” by international experts.
The term refers to the systematic erasure of education through the arrest, detention, or killing of teachers, students, and staff, and the destruction of educational infrastructure.
Reham Hamid, the mother of Rami, who was studying in an UNRWA school in Al-Shati refugee camp, west of Gaza City, said that she was forced to send her 9 year-old son to a tent inside a school housing the displaced, in order for him to attend classes.
Despite initiatives to open educational classes in tents, the process did not go as it should, due to the lack of human resources, tools and space, according to Hamid.
While the Ministry of Education, whether in the Gaza Strip or the West Bank, did not issue any comment on the fate of the academic year in the Strip, thousands of high school students are still waiting for any glimmer of hope in order not to lose an entire year.
Student Ramadan Makkawi said that he was feeling lost.
“We spent the most important stage in any student’s life displaced and under bombing. We think about survival, homes, family, and food instead of universities. A difficult situation to describe,” he said.
He continued: “It is clear that there is no solution. We will pay the price with our lives.”
