Amjad Abu Dhaka, one of the top students at his school in Khan Yunis, excels in math and English, and when war broke out in the Gaza Strip last October, he decided to study in the United States. I was applying for a scholarship.
Teachers rewarded students with good grades with trips to local historical sites and piers, where they watched boats and took photos of the sunset. He dreamed of pursuing a career in medicine, like his older sister Nagam, who studied dentistry in Gaza City.
But his old life and old dreams now feel far away. His school was bombed, many of his friends and teachers were killed, and his family, along with over a million others, fled their homes to Rafah in search of safety.
“Everything in my town is gone forever. I feel like a soulless body. I want to have hope again,” said 16-year-old Amjad.
There is no end in sight to the war in Gaza. Even if they existed, they would do little to change the bleak educational outlook for the more than 625,000 students the United Nations estimates are in the region.
Seven months of war destroyed education at all levels. According to the United Nations, more than 80% of Gaza's schools have been severely damaged or destroyed in the fighting. This includes all 12 universities in Gaza.
This has led critics, including the Palestinian Ministry of Education and more than 20 United Nations officials, to say that Israel is deliberately targeting educational facilities in the same way it is accused of targeting hospitals. I'm blaming.
“It may be reasonable to ask whether there is a deliberate effort to comprehensively destroy the Palestinian education system, an act known as 'academic murder,'” said a group of 25 UN experts. said in a statement last month.
“These attacks are not isolated incidents,” it added. “They demonstrate a systematic pattern of violence aimed at dismantling the very foundations of Palestinian society.”
In response, the Israeli military said in a statement on Wednesday that there was no “doctrine aimed at causing maximum damage to civilian infrastructure.” The government blames the destruction of Gaza schools, as well as hospitals, on the “exploitation of civilian buildings for terrorist purposes” by Hamas, which has built underground tunnels to launch attacks and store weapons. He said that he is using it.
“Under certain conditions, this illegal military use could invalidate the protection of schools from attack,” the military said.
Hamas did not respond to requests for comment on Israel's accusations of using schools and other civilian facilities in the Gaza Strip for military purposes. Hamas has long denied such accusations. When State Department spokesman Matthew Miller accused Hamas of operating in schools last fall, the organization said, “Claims that Hamas uses hospitals and schools as military bases are a blatantly false narrative.'' It's a repeat of that,'' he said in a statement.
Last month, the United Nations said it had recorded at least 5,479 students, 261 teachers and 95 university professors killed in Gaza since October, and at least 7,819 students and 756 teachers injured.
The implications for Gaza's future are as serious as this devastation. Students have already experienced a long gap in their education and face a future in which there will be few intact schools to return to when the war ends.
The war “really had a big impact on the education system,” said Hamdan al-Agha, 40, a science teacher who fled the southern Gaza city of Khan Yunis. “And it will last for generations.”
Before the war, there were 813 schools in Gaza, employing about 22,000 teachers, according to the Global Education Cluster, a research group working with the United Nations. Many schools were operated by UNRWA, the United Nations agency for Palestinian refugees.
But by last week, more than 85% of these schools had been damaged or destroyed, according to a study conducted by the Education Cluster based on satellite imagery. The report said more than two-thirds of Gaza's schools will need to be completely rebuilt or undergo major repairs before the buildings can be safely used again.
An earlier investigation found that more than a third of school buildings were directly hit and 53 schools were “completely destroyed.” Another 38 buildings lost more than half of their structures.
Universities have been particularly hard hit. Al-Azhar University in Gaza City, where Amjad's sister Nagam studied dentistry, is in ruins. The Israeli military said it used the campus as an outpost and that Hamas operated there, leaving weapons behind. Ms. Nagam currently spends her days cooking, cleaning her family's tent, and taking care of her younger brother.
An investigation by the Education Cluster found that more than 320 school buildings are being used as shelters for displaced Gazan residents, and more than half of them were either directly hit or severely damaged by nearby explosions.
An Israeli sergeant, speaking on condition of anonymity, said he spent a week at Al-Azhar University last fall. He said soldiers found five tunnel entrances on the campus and saw weapons such as rifles and grenades in two tunnels.
“It felt like we were on a military base,” said Sgt. “But if you look closely, you'll see that it's a university.”
Another reservist, also speaking on condition of anonymity, said the military used Al-Azhar as a base to protect a supply route through northern Gaza that was also used to transport Palestinian prisoners of war.
During breaks, he said, the soldiers played backgammon, drank coffee and scoured the ruins of the university. Most of the books they found were boring — “all about law and chicken anatomy,” he said — but the soldiers occasionally found useful items.
“We had labs all over the place, so we got beakers and washed them and cleaned them, so we had coffee cups, too, which was nice,” the soldier said.
Amjad said he remembered the five teachers killed at his school, including science teacher Eyad al-Rikeb and a physical education teacher nicknamed Abu Sheiker. Sometimes it feels like I can't bear to go through the list of people and things I've lost.
“Gaza has lost everything,” he said. “I became desperate.”
Some students tried to continue their studies during the war with the help of teachers who volunteered their time and parents who homeschooled their children in shelters and tents. Nagam became Amjad's wartime teacher.
One day, he saw English textbooks being sold on the sidewalk. There, he said, vendors often sell books to use as kindling. Her mother tried to use it to start a fire, but Nagam helped Amjad persuade her mother to let her keep it. At night, the siblings sit together and review their lessons. Amjad is still determined to study in the United States, he said.
“I just read a few paragraphs with her and she taught me the correct pronunciation,” Amjad said. “She asks me about synonyms and antonyms for simple words we come across.”
Nagam is happy to do it, but she has her own dreams. She hopes to complete her degree by attending online classes at Al-Najjah University in the West Bank, or at least take advanced English classes.
She had considered applying her medical training to Rafah, but Gaza's crumbling infrastructure made even a dental exam seem impossible.
“All we do here is pull teeth,” she says. “There's no electricity.”
Mohamed Shubeir, a school director from Khan Younis, said displaced people in Rafah sometimes offered tents as temporary school buildings, where volunteers taught classes to children in the camp.
This spring, he helped organize a five-day basics course taught by volunteers at Rapha. But he thought the lessons would have little impact, he said.
He often sees his former students selling food on the street or waiting in long lines for bread and basic medicines. Seven months of war taught them survival skills, not grammar or algebra.
Schweier, who had been living with her children in a tent near the beach for months, said they were all just trying to survive.
“Most of them spend all day searching for firewood for their families,” he said. “How can students think about all kinds of learning if they can’t learn the basics?”
Adam Serra Contributed report from Tel Aviv.
