Children in Gaza Return to School After Years of Violence and Hardship

Children in Gaza are returning to school as the new academic year begins, but their classrooms are still seriously damaged and lacking basic equipment after years of violence. Some classrooms at a school in Nuseirat sponsored by the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestinian Refugees (UNRWA) lack desks, forcing children to sit on floor covers. Some people have old, damaged desks that survived the conflict.

For many youngsters, the years since the war began have been marked by frequent displacement, fleeing airstrikes and shelling and, at times, spending their days scavenging for water and food for their families rather than learning and socialising.

For some families, returning to school has restored a feeling of routine that had been lost during the conflict. I arrived to find a normal school environment—as much as was possible—with a morning assembly and a warm welcome from the administration,” Asmaa Al-Hour, a mother of two school-aged children, stated.

“My youngster is happy; he had been eager to go to school since sunrise, just like his brothers. I also have a fourth-grade daughter who attended courses for the first month after spending the previous three years of the war wishing she could at least go to school,” al-Hour remarked.

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