Noor Suleiman Abu Batihan 2026/06/17 Studies 43 visits
In the Gaza Strip, education is unlike any other educational experience in the world, neither in function nor in impact; here in Gaza of resilience, the school does not merely represent a service institution, but a space of hope in a harsh reality, and an extension of the idea of survival. How many parents have gone to bed hungry, only to find their child in the morning with a pencil and notebook accompanying them to school.
Education in Gaza is not a traditional career path, but an existential philosophy, a strategy of resilience, and a tool for confronting a reality burdened with pain, and a nearly sole window to a more plausible future under a stifling siege and repeated assaults. Therefore, the challenges faced by the educational system cannot be reduced to being merely a service sector that has been damaged by aggression, but should be read in the context of a broader structural fragility and chronic pressure that affects one of the most important components of survival.
Today, education appears to be trapped between the hammer of aggression that disrupts its normalcy and undermines its stability, and the anvil of an international funding system characterized by instability and fragility. This bitter reality raises questions that extend beyond the educational matter itself, touching the essence of the idea of the right to education and its actual meaning.
Amidst this scene, the question urgently imposes itself: Is the education of Gaza's children in danger?
In Gaza, the school does not represent merely walls and a roof, but a space of hope and a rare feeling of stability. Many children do not dream of degrees or future professions, but of a stable classroom, a board and chalk, and seats that preserve some of the natural rhythm of school life, and with every military escalation, this image turns to rubble, schools close, and classrooms transform into overcrowded shelters, where the necessities of survival replace lessons and social interaction.
Recent UN estimates indicate a wide range of damage to the education infrastructure in the sector (UN OCHA, 2024; UNESCO, 2024). However, the loss is not only measured by the number of affected buildings, but by the erosion of what can be termed the educational memory of the community, as each school was not just a site for learning, but a center for social and cultural life, and a space for accumulating experiences and relations.
The martyrdom of students and teachers does not only represent a human loss, but a deep cognitive gap that is difficult to compensate for, every lost teacher is a lost accumulated educational experience, and every killed student is a dream extinguished before it begins, and in this context, discussing reconstruction is not just a matter of infrastructure, but a rebuilding of a complete knowledge and human capital.
The ongoing aggression also leads to a cumulative educational loss that is not only linked to the number of lost school days, but to the decline in essential skills among students; a child moving from school to a shelter and then to a temporary learning space loses not only academic time, but also loses the sense of continuity that forms the basis of learning itself. Specialized reports in emergency education indicate that this kind of chronic interruption leaves long-term cognitive and psychological effects (UNICEF, 2024).
In Gaza, every lost lesson, and every destroyed classroom, is not merely an incidental event, but a daily reminder that the aggression does not only target physical structures, but attempts to redefine the idea of the future itself.
In the Gaza Strip, funding is not merely numbers in budgets, but the engine that maintains the continuity of the educational process and keeps classrooms vibrant. And when this support collapses or is delayed, students find themselves deprived of the simplest elements of education, from books and pens, suitable seats and real walls, an attentive teacher unburdened by worries.
Fragile funding does not only affect the efficiency of the school, but gets to the core of children's rights to education, every delay in financial support or every short-term funding cycle means that necessary psychosocial support programs in the context of collective trauma become subject to reduction or cancellation. Also, alternative learning spaces, which represent a lifeline for the continuity of education, remain hostage to the flow of resources. In this reality, funding becomes not just a tool of support, but a sword hanging over children's heads, determining whether they have the right to learn in decent conditions or merely to stay enrolled with the minimum required.
The United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA) has repeatedly warned that funding shortages impose forced reductions in…