As Israel begins school year, Gaza children face death and destruction

While students in Israel started their new school year equipped with new backpacks, books, and stationery on Monday, children in Gaza face a starkly different reality, with many either dead or their schools reduced to rubble.

This year Israel geared up to accommodate over 2.5 million students nationwide.

This includes 535,000 kindergarteners, 514,000 high school students, 335,000 middle school students, and 1,174,000 elementary pupils, according to Israeli media. For a country of 9 million, the education workforce is substantial, comprising 236,000 staff members, 5,754 principals, and over 200,000 teachers.

But there were no welcome speeches, teary hugs from parents at the school gates, new uniforms or bookbags for Palestinian children in Gaza, where the school year remains suspended due to Israel’s ongoing offensive that began on October 7, 2023.

More than 10,000 students in Gaza have been killed and 15,000 wounded as a result of Israeli attacks, with 19,000 students have been displaced, according to the Palestinian Education Ministry.

Israel has also killed at least 400 teachers and damaged 90 percent of school buildings in Gaza. Around 58,000 Palestinian children have been denied first grade, the stepping stone in the academic journey.

Nearly 41,000 Palestinians — mostly women and children — are killed in those attacks and around 95,000 are wounded, a conservative estimate.

Bahaa and Batool, 17-year-old high school students in Gaza, like 89,000 other high school seniors in Palestine, were preparing to take the university entrance exam, known as Tawjihi.

But Israel's genocidal campaign prevented Bahaa and around 39,000 other students in Gaza from taking the exam and pursuing their dreams.

"Unfortunately, after the war, it became about how to find water, gather wood to make a fire and bake bread," Bahaa told TRT World.

Since October, at least 625,000 children in Gaza have been out of school due to the war.

"I had hoped to study dentistry at Al-Azhar University. Now, I am in a displacement camp in Deir al Balah," Batool Abualatta told TRT World.

The brutal attacks on Gaza’s educational infrastructure caused immediate devastation and robbed an entire generation of their future, leaving them with disabilities, trauma and no access to learning.

In early May, a satellite-based assessment found that 85.8 percent of schools in Gaza, including UN-run ones, had been partially or completely damaged due to months of Israeli attacks.

"For people like us who are still sheltering in schools when the new school year begins, this will be the second year they've lost," said Mona Mohammed Abu Aida, a mother of a schoolboy named Hamoud.

"Where can we go? Where can the people in these schools go? "