schools bombed or transformed into shelters for displaced people

Around the world, students are returning to class these days. But in the Gaza Strip, there are barely any classrooms left to return to after 11 months of conflict that has devastated schools, colleges and universities.

The education sector has been hit hard since the start of the war in Gaza nearly a year ago. The Palestinian Ministry of Education estimates that more than 10,000 students have lost their lives, including some 650 university students; as well as more than 500 teaching staff.

According to the latest report by the Education Cluster (an initiative of UNICEF and Save the Children), more than 90% of Gaza’s education centres are damaged to varying degrees and nearly 85% will need to be completely rebuilt or rehabilitated. Furthermore, the report denounces a growing trend of direct attacks on schools, from November to July, with a total of 344 buildings attacked.

The report is based on the analysis of satellite images, which confirm the Education Cluster’s data and estimates on the massive destruction of educational centers in the Gaza Strip, which coincides with the general pattern of destruction: most of the destroyed schools are located in the northern half, especially in Gaza City, as a large number of public, private and United Nations Refugee Agency (UNRWA) centers were concentrated in the city.

UNRWA reports that more than 600,000 primary school students have been unable to receive an education – half of them in the agency’s schools – since October 2023. This figure represents nearly a third of the population of Gaza, where 41,000 people have died since then.

Of the nearly 300 UNRWA centres in the Gaza Strip, more than 120 have been damaged and destroyed by the Israeli offensive, and the organisation has reported direct attacks on its facilities in Gaza.

“There are no schools in use as such in Gaza anymore,” Juliette Touma, UNRWA’s communications director, told elDiario.es. “All the schools closed when the war broke out on October 7. “The children of Gaza have already lost a whole year of education, and the longer it takes for them to return to school, the harder it will be for them to return to any form of education and make up for lost time this year.”

We will not be able to reopen the school year on September 1 because most of our schools are hosting displaced families, tens of thousands of people.

Juliette Touma
— UNRWA Director of Communications

Since August 1, UNRWA has been providing psychological support to children in some 50 centers for displaced people in the Gaza Strip, although Touma stresses that “there is no safe place in Gaza, not even the UN shelters.” Some of the more than 9,000 UNRWA teaching staff in Gaza, specially trained to provide psychosocial support, are in charge of these activities, which aim to help children “overcome some of the trauma they have suffered because of the war,” Touma explains, adding that there are many challenges in reaching children due to constant displacement, evacuation orders from the Israeli army and violence.

“We will not be able to reopen the school year on September 1 because most of our schools are hosting displaced families, tens of thousands of people. And many of our schools have been bombed or are badly damaged,” laments the UNRWA communications director.

Touma adds that “the problem is that if children do not go to school and spend their days in the rubble, dealing with their trauma without learning anything, they will be more vulnerable to all types of exploitation, including child labour and child marriage – in particular, in the case of girls – as well as recruitment by armed groups.

Two classes missed

Palestinian-Bolivian doctor Refaat Alathamna tells elDiario.es from Gaza that he and his wife are “very worried” because their five children have lost a year of school and “will most likely lose another because the war is not over yet.” Their daughters Mira and Elin are 12 and 10 years old respectively and will not be able to return to school for the second year in a row. Their third daughter, Silin, is six and was unable to start primary school in 2023. The youngest, Ayham, four, was due to start preschool last year; while the middle child, Amir, eight, was also unable to attend second grade.

“My children would like to go back to school to study and learn like every year, to see their classmates and teachers, to play and for everything to be like always,” Alathamna says. But their schools are destroyed, he adds, and the family has already had to move several times within the Gaza Strip due to Israeli attacks and army evacuation orders. Currently, he is in the Israeli-designated “humanitarian zone,” which is getting smaller and smaller and where more people expelled from other areas are gathering.

The doctor regrets that his children “do almost no educational activities due to the difficulties of the war,” including the lack of electricity, internet connection and stability in general. “For months, life has been very unstable, with terror and attacks all the time,” he explains. Online education is not an option because communications in the Gaza Strip do not always work and most families no longer have a home.

Despite all this, the only hope for Alathamna and his family is to leave Gaza “so that I can recover everything I lost, from my children’s education to everything else, and finally be safe somewhere else and have a new life.” The doctor, who speaks Spanish because he studied in Bolivia, wants to go to the country, but since the beginning of May, the only border from Gaza through which Palestinians could leave has been closed because Israel took control of the Rafah crossing.

Waiting to graduate

University students have also lost the 2023/24 academic year and the hope of ever graduating. Aseel Abdelsalam was unable to continue his studies in English literature, even though he had little time left to finish his studies in January of this year. From Gaza, she tells elDiario.es that it was a “terrible trauma” for her: “Two days before the war started, I was studying at university and living happily with my family and friends.” He now lives in a tent in a camp for displaced people in the city of Khan Yunis, in the south of the Gaza Strip. “I don’t have my books here, I didn’t take them with me when I left our house because we could only take very little with us,” he laments.

Abdelsalam explains that about two months ago, Al Aqsa University began offering online classes, but the intermittent power supply means that many students do not have a battery in their mobile phones or laptops, nor an internet connection to follow the classes. “I suffer from this problem myself, but I try to charge my phone and look for an internet connection,” the young woman says through WhatsApp messages that arrive approximately every twelve hours.

“If I want to listen to a lecture, I go to a cafeteria to connect to the Internet, but it’s about four kilometers away and it’s very, very expensive,” he says, adding that his brother is studying at the institute and is in the same situation. “Also, many people are displaced and don’t have their electronic devices because they were destroyed in the bombings or sold in exchange for something more important during the war,” the 24-year-old explains.

“My degree and all my expectations have been postponed until after the war,” Abdelsalam laments, not knowing how long he will have to wait. Hamza Salha, another student at Al Aqsa University – Gaza’s main public university – is in a similar situation. “I was missing a semester when the war started, I was going to graduate in February 2024,” he tells elDiario.es from the northern Gaza Strip.

In addition, he was considering doing it at the University of Malaga with a scholarship to complete his studies in Spain. Salha had studied primary education at this Spanish university for one semester during the 2022/23 academic year and in 2023/2024 he was going to take another, before finally being able to graduate. “I currently have a scholarship, but I can’t travel because of the border closure” between Gaza and Egypt, he explains, specifying that in Spain he was able to experience the “freedom” that he does not currently have. “I am missing out on this opportunity and I don’t know what will happen to my studies.”

Salha recalls experiencing very difficult times with his family, during which they suffered artillery and air attacks. “We saved lives on several occasions,” he says. The experiences that left the most lasting impression on him were recounted in articles published in publications such as The Electronic Intifada.

“I don’t see the end of the war, I’ve lost hope. I try not to have feelings and I let them do what they want to me; if they want to kill me, that’s not a problem,” says the young man who turned 22 in August. But he never stops dreaming of one day working as a journalist in Spain.