For the third year… Gaza’s school bells have not rung!
For the third consecutive year, it has been
the harshest for Gaza’s students, for no school bell
has rung. The war has erased the dreams of hundreds of students who had been
waiting, year after year, to climb the ladder of their educational journey,
striving to fulfill ambitions they had sketched upon their excellent grades in
previous years.
Gaza’s
schools reduced to rubble
There are no longer even faint signs of a new school year that never began;
time itself has stopped for the third year in a row. Schools, universities, and
everything related to the educational process have all been turned into
targets.
Wherever one looks, there is rubble. Az-Zahraa
School no longer stands tall, the same fate befell Yafa School, while Balqees,
Ar-Rais, Ahmad Shawqi, and Mustafa Hafez shared their destiny too—alongside
many other schools that disappeared, carrying with them the untold stories of
their students.
Khaled no longer waits for the sound of the
school bell, for he will never return again. He was martyred with his family
inside the very school they had fled to after their house was bombed. He
thought the school might be a refuge of safety, never knowing that in Gaza,
everything is a target.
Gaza’s children’s dreams fade away
Saeed used to dream of carrying his schoolbag and standing in the morning
assembly with his classmates. But instead, that dream haunted him while
standing in another long, endless line—for water for his family. It had become
his daily duty after his father was martyred when their home was bombed as they
slept. Saeed was pulled miraculously from beneath the rubble, but his father
still lies under it, crushed beyond rescue.
Rond no longer loves school. She screams
whenever it is mentioned to her. She and her family had sought refuge in the
very school she once studied in, but it was bombed without warning. Her entire
extended family was martyred, leaving her as the sole survivor, carrying burns
across her body that will remain a lifelong testimony to that massacre.
Between
witness and martyr in Gaza: the story of teacher Sally
Teacher Sally no longer needs to pack her bag with grains and sweets for her
beloved students, whom she treated as her own daughters. She used to teach them
the alphabet—letters that spelled out love for religion, obedience to Allah,
love of the Prophet (peace be upon him), the Quran, Palestine,
the liberation of Al-Aqsa Mosque, and the freedom of the prisoners. That bag no
longer exists; Sally’s body was torn to pieces, mingling with the sweets she
carried, for the occupation could not tolerate even her presence.
In Gaza, everything is either a witness or
a martyr: the teacher, the student, the school—all martyrs.
And if the school bell ever rings again in
Gaza, how can a martyred student return to his desk? How can a student who lost
his entire family inside his classroom return to the same school? Every school
has borne the stories of its displaced, where fear, hunger, loss, bombardment,
and martyrdom converged.
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Gaza...
Childhood buried and dreams fading in an ongoing crime against humanity
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