In a city where education has been buried beneath layers of ash and broken stone, the reopening of Gaza’s ancient Al-Kamaliyah School stands as a quiet act of defiance. Once a proud institution of learning dating back to the Ayyubid era, the school has reopened its doors after nearly fifty years, proving that even under the weight of destruction, the thirst for knowledge endures.

After two relentless years of genocidal war that devastated nearly every educational facility across the Strip, Gaza’s educators have turned to history to rebuild the present. Without resources, desks, or electricity, they revived Al-Kamaliyah, one of the few surviving landmarks of the city’s intellectual heritage. Its classrooms, long silent since the 1970s, now echo once again with the voices of 300 children, divided between morning and midday shifts, learning in conditions that reflect both hardship and hope.

For many families, this modest reopening represents far more than the return of a school; it is the revival of a right nearly extinguished. Parents who had lost homes and livelihoods now queue outside its gates, desperate to secure a place for their children. Yet space remains painfully limited, forcing some students to study under tents or in courtyards where the wind replaces the walls that once sheltered them.

Despite unimaginable loss, with tens of thousands of students and educators killed and hundreds of schools destroyed, Gaza’s commitment to learning persists. In the face of a campaign that sought to erase minds as much as lives, the revival of Al-Kamaliyah symbolises a simple truth: education in Gaza is not merely about lessons or degrees. It is an act of resistance, a bridge between memory and survival.