When the fragile ceasefire was declared, many in Gaza felt a fleeting relief that the skies had fallen silent, yet silence, here, is never permanent. Beneath the ruins of schools and homes, the longing for normalcy endures. For Gaza’s children, that hope lies in education, a lifeline that can help heal the deep scars left by two years of genocidal war.

Before the destruction began, classrooms were filled with laughter and the hum of young voices learning a new word or writing their first sentences in English. Now, those same children study in tents or under makeshift shelters, sitting on cold ground with little more than determination. With books and notebooks either destroyed or unaffordable, some children write on scraps of cardboard, others on torn fragments salvaged from the wreckage of homes. Teachers, refusing to surrender, turn to oral storytelling and recitation to keep minds alive.

Education has become an act of resistance, a quiet defiance against despair. For many children, a single pen passed between hands is more than a tool; it is a symbol of continuity, a promise that their voices will not be erased. The recent truce may have paused the bombs, but Gaza’s 600,000 school-aged children still wait for the world to see that learning is not a luxury but a right. Rebuilding classrooms and restocking supplies must be as urgent as providing food and shelter, for in every child who continues to learn amid the ruins, there is the fragile yet unbroken thread of Gaza’s future.