KHAN YUNIS: Under normal circumstances teenagers across the Gaza Strip would have been taking their final examinations, this month. These exams are seen as the last hurdle before university and before students embark upon chasing their lifelong dreams. However, the assault on the Palestinian territory has crushed those hopes.

According to the education ministry in the Gaza Strip, 85 per cent of educational facilities in the territory are out of service because of the crisis. “I was eagerly awaiting the exams, but the war prevented that and destroyed that joy”, said Baraa al-Farra, who is an 18-year-old student displaced from ‘Khan Yunis’ (in southern Gaza).

“At first we were waiting in the hope that the war would end and we would catch up,” he said. But “we don’t know how long it will last or how many years it will deprive us of our educational lives.”

The Education Cluster, which is a UN-backed organisation, estimated in a report this month that more than 75pc of Gaza’s schools require full reconstruction or major rehabilitation to reopen. Many of these schools have been turned into shelters for Gaza’s displaced and others have been damaged in the bombardment taking place.

‘Books not bombs’

Liliane Nihad, an 18-year-old displaced to Khan Yunis from Gaza City (in the territory’s north) says she and her fellow students had “been waiting 12 years to take these exams and pass and feel happy and enter university but we have been deprived of all that by this damned war”.

Nihad says she hoped to study English and to get a doctorate, “but all of that has evaporated”. Displaying their anger at the situation, dozens of students and teachers held a protest in Gaza City’s Al-Rimal neighbourhood, on Saturday.

“We demand our right to take high school exams” and “We want books, not bombs” they chanted, while empty chairs were laid out to symbolise those students killed in the war.

Mediation has failed to bring an end to the fighting, leaving Gaza’s youth with deep rooted uncertainty regarding their futures. Farra said he now wants to get out of the territory to achieve his dreams.

“I hope that the crossing will be opened so that I can travel in order to complete my education and not waste my years because I am young and want to achieve my ambitions.” For now, he is forced to face the harsh realities of life under siege. “I wish I could experience the fatigue of staying up late studying now and not the fatigue of queueing for sweet and salty water” in the territory where clean water is scarce, like many other essentials.

‘Psychologically exhausted’

Pupils in the Israeli-occupied West Bank will take the exams, as will those Gazans who managed to escape to the neighbouring country of Egypt. Even for these pupils, however, the war has been hugely disruptive.

Published in Dawn, June 24th, 2024