Fear of a “lost generation”: School year in Gaza begins with classes closed

Cairo: The new school year in the Palestinian territories officially began on Monday. In the Gaza Strip, all schools are closed after eleven months of war and a ceasefire is not in sight.

As part of its ongoing assault on Palestinian territory, Israel has issued new calls for residents of the northern Gaza Strip to leave their homes in response to rockets fired at Israel.

Umm Zaki's son Moataz, 15, was supposed to be in the tenth grade. Instead, he woke up in their tent in Deir al-Balah in central Gaza and was sent to fetch a container of water from more than a kilometre away.

“Normally, such a day would be a day of celebration. You see the children in their new uniforms, they go to school and dream of becoming doctors or engineers. Today we just hope that the war ends before we lose any of them,” the mother of five told Reuters via text message.

The Palestinian Ministry of Education said all schools in the Gaza Strip were closed and 90 percent of them were destroyed or damaged in the Israeli assault on the territory, which began after Hamas gunmen attacked Israeli towns in October last year.

The United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA), which runs about half of the schools in the Gaza Strip, has converted as many of them as possible into emergency shelters where thousands of displaced families live.

“The longer children are out of school, the harder it is for them to catch up, and the more likely they are to become a lost generation and fall victim to exploitation, including child marriage, child labour and recruitment into armed groups,” said Juliette Touma, UNRWA's Director of Communications. Reuters.

In addition to the 625,000 Gaza residents who are already registered for school and would therefore miss classes, another 58,000 six-year-olds were due to register to start first grade this year, the Education Ministry said.

Last month, UNRWA launched a learning revitalization program in 45 of its shelters, with teachers organizing games, theater, art, music and sports activities to promote children's mental health.

“A warning has been issued for the specified area.”

Almost all of the 2.3 million inhabitants of the Gaza Strip have been displaced from their homes at least once, some even having to flee ten times.

In a recent evacuation order, Israel asked residents of an area in the northern Gaza Strip to leave their homes after rockets were fired at southern Israel the previous day.

“To everyone in the restricted area. Terrorist organizations are once again firing rockets at the State of Israel and carrying out terrorist attacks from this area. There have been several warnings about the restricted area in the past. The restricted area is considered a dangerous combat zone,” an Israeli military spokesman said in Arabic on X.

The United Nations has called on Palestinians in the northern Gaza Strip to go to medical facilities to vaccinate children under 10 against polio. Temporary pauses in fighting have been called to allow the vaccination campaign to take place. The aim is to reach 640,000 children in Gaza after the territory saw its first case of polio in around 25 years.

UN officials said the campaign in southern and central Gaza has so far reached more than half of the children who need the drops. A second round of vaccinations will be needed four weeks after the first.

Health officials said on Monday that two separate Israeli airstrikes killed seven people in central Gaza, while another attack in Khan Younis further south left one man dead.

The armed wings of Hamas and Islamic Jihad said they had fought Israeli forces in several areas of the Gaza Strip with anti-tank missiles and mortar shells.

The Israeli military said forces had continued to dismantle military infrastructure and killed dozens of militants in recent days, including senior Hamas and Islamic Jihad commanders.

The war began on October 7, when Hamas, which controlled Gaza, attacked Israel, killing 1,200 people and taking about 250 hostages, according to Israeli sources. According to the enclave's Health Ministry, more than 40,900 Palestinians were killed in Israel's subsequent assault on Gaza.

The two warring sides blame each other for their failure to reach a ceasefire that would end the fighting and lead to the release of the hostages.