Karim Al Masri was scheduled to begin his final exams on Saturday morning, a few weeks before graduation. Instead, he filled the water in the morning, turned it into ice, and sold the water to support his family.
“I should have studied and prepared for my final exams,” said Al-Masri, 18. But now, more than eight months after the war began, “I spend my days working to provide for my family so they can cope with the difficulties.” situation.”
Mr al-Masri was one of about 39,000 Gaza students in the Palestinian territories and Jordan who were unable to take their final high school exams, which were scheduled to begin on Saturday, and were unable to graduate, according to the Palestinian Ministry of Education. cabinet.
The war devastated Gaza’s education system, which was already struggling due to multiple wars and escalations since 2008. At least 625,000 children are out of education in Gaza because schools have closed since the war began, according to UNRWA, the UN agency supporting Palestine. It’s October, just over a month since the new school year started.
More than 76% of the Gaza Strip’s schools will need reconstruction or major reconstruction to become functional after months of Israeli offensive, according to UNRWA, which runs many of the schools in the Gaza Strip. Many of these schools were used as shelters to accommodate many refugee families from Gaza living in miserable conditions.
Mr. Al-Masri said he dreamed of studying information technology at the Islamic University of Gaza or the University of Applied Sciences. Both were destroyed by Israeli bombing. According to the United Nations, all 12 universities in Gaza were seriously damaged or destroyed in the fighting.
Instead of pinning his hopes on going back to school and graduating, he said the war has changed his priorities and he is now focused on working to continue to support his family. While selling ice in the village of Deir al Balah in central Gaza, Mr. al-Masri said he often passed by a school where “classrooms had been turned into shelters,” and when he looked inside, he saw “full of suffering.” ”
Islam al-Najjar, 18, who was due to sit his first final exam on Saturday, said his school in Deir al-Bala, where many Gazans fled Israel’s Rafah offensive, had also been turned into a shelter.
“I can’t imagine going back to see the school, where we learn, turned into a shelter full of refugees living in miserable conditions,” she said.
“When we go back, we won’t see all the same faces,” she said, referring to her classmates, two teachers and a principal who died during the war.
Al Najjar remains hopeful about the possibility of returning to school and graduating. She said that despite “there are many obstacles to everything she wants to achieve in Gaza,” she dreams of studying abroad and has set a goal of studying business administration at Harvard University or Oxford University.
“I was very excited to finish my last year of school and start a new chapter,” said Al Najjar, the eldest member of the family who had been planning a graduation celebration before the war began. “But of course the war put everything to a halt.”
“Why does the spring of our lives coincide with the destruction of our country?” Mr. al-Najjar said. “Is it our fault that we dared to dream?”
Abu Bakr Bashir Contributing reporting from London.
