GAZA, Saturday, April 6, 2024 (WAFA) – In a tent in southern Gaza, children play a make-believe "school" game after being cut off from education in the besieged territory, where eight out of ten schools have been destroyed, according to UNICEF, since the start of the Israeli aggression six months ago.
Jonathan Crickx, spokesperson for UNICEF in the Palestinian Territories, says that the initiative to establish the makeshift school allows children, especially, to cope with the trauma, describing the situation as "absolutely tragic."
"There are 325,000 school-age children who haven't attended a single class in six months," he adds.
Majd Halawa, 16, recounts how Israeli airstrikes hit his school in Gaza City, from which he and his family fled. He recalls that the Israeli occupation forces gave the family and some relatives a three-minute notice to evacuate the six-story building they inhabited in Gaza.
Speaking from Edmonton, Canada, where he sought refuge in mid-January, Majd tells AFP, "I left all my books and school supplies at home. I thought I would return to the country soon, but that didn't happen."
Schooling in Gaza has been halted since the start of the Israeli aggression on October 7th. UNRWA's schools in the territory have turned into shelters for hundreds of thousands of displaced people, with 67% of schools directly hit and 82% damaged, according to a report by NGOs based on satellite images and field reports.
The reconstruction of schools will be a challenging first step in getting children back to school. But the real challenge will be healing the displaced children of Gaza and dealing with the psychological traumas resulting from death, destruction, and hunger, so they can return to learning, health workers say.
In Rafah, in the southernmost part of the Strip, over a million and a half people, mostly displaced, are crowded, according to the United Nations, with the humanitarian situation in the city becoming dire.
About half of Gaza's population is under 18. The education system in the Strip was already struggling after five wars Israel waged in the past twenty years, compounded by poverty and unemployment.
David Skinner of Save the Children says, "Rebuilding schools is extremely complicated... but it's simpler than rehabilitating education."
Temporary schools have been set up in tents in Rafah city.
In a small tent, a teacher stands next to a wooden board teaching first and second-grade students, saying, "We feel joy because we are trying to avoid illiteracy for hundreds of thousands of students."
Despite the lack of textbooks and pens, the teacher, Heba Halawa, says before 30 children trying to learn their first words, "Children are still happy to be in school."
Although there are preliminary plans by the Ministry of Education and Higher Education to resume basic and secondary education after the cessation of aggression, Majd Halawa, who dreamed of becoming a lawyer, feels that it's not just about having a school to go back to. "No one can overcome all the memories of what happened, not even in a hundred years," he says.
Audrey McMahon, a child psychiatrist from Doctors Without Borders, says, "Learning requires being in a safe place. Most children in Gaza are currently operating under shock."
She adds, "The challenges they will face are immense and will take a long time to recover from. Younger children may develop lifelong cognitive impairments due to malnutrition, while teenagers are likely to feel anger at injustice."
The Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics (PCBS) says that Israeli forces kill about 4 children every hour in Gaza, and 43,349 children live without one or both parents, or guardians, due to the continuous Israeli aggression on Gaza for 182 days.
The PCBS added in a statement issued on the occasion of Palestinian Children's Day, which falls on April 5 of each year, that more than 14,350 children, accounting for 44% of the total number of martyrs in Gaza, have been killed due to the Israeli aggression, while women and children make up 70% of the missing in Gaza.
As a result of the continuous Israeli airstrikes on Gaza and the toll of martyrs among students and teachers and the destruction of the infrastructure of a considerable number of schools, around 620,000 students have been deprived of their right to school education for the 2023/2024 academic year.
The number of students enrolled in schools in the Gaza Strip who have been killed reached 5,994, according to the PCBS, while 9,890 other students have been wounded.
M.N
