In Gaza, where the chalkboard once symbolised hope, only rubble and silence remain. Since 7 October 2023, more than 17,000 children have been killed in the ongoing Israeli assault on the Strip—most of them school-aged. Behind each number is a classroom left empty, a story untold, a dream cut short.

Palestinian Child Day, observed on 5 April, has arrived as a solemn reminder of what has been lost. The Ministry of Education confirmed that education in Gaza has been directly targeted—schools flattened, libraries burned, and schoolbags buried under concrete. In a war that has spared nothing, even the right to learn has been turned into a battlefield.

According to recent data, over 12,799 students have been killed and nearly 21,000 injured. Hundreds of schools—both governmental and UN-run—have been bombed, vandalised, or completely destroyed. At least 788,000 children have been denied access to education. Some have been orphaned, many are displaced, and nearly all are traumatised. The classroom, once a place of safety and growth, is now a memory carried by survivors.

And yet, amid grief and destruction, Gaza’s children refuse to surrender their right to dream. Makeshift classes, virtual initiatives, and whispered lessons in shelters testify to an unbreakable spirit. Education, in their eyes, is not a privilege but a form of resistance—an act of survival in the face of deliberate erasure.

As the world watches in silence, the future of an entire generation hangs in the balance. The question is no longer whether Gaza’s children can go back to school. The question is: will the world allow them to have a future at all?