Name: Children in Gaza return to school after years without formal education | BBC News
Uploaded: 2026-01-08T17:13:59.000Z
Duration: 3 min 2 s
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Now, children in Gaza are going back to school for the first time in two years, with many not having stepped inside a classroom or had any formal education.

Since then, according to UNICEF, more than 97% of schools have been damaged or destroyed.

Basic passive voice

despite continued hunger and displacement, many Palestinian families are choosing education first.

For two years, they learned firsthand how fear, hunger and death can shape their young lives.

As they step back into classrooms, their smiles carry something fragile but powerful, the sense that life might finally begin to move forward.

This makeshift school stands on the ruins of an old one.

Before, we were in a proper school building and we used to study every day.

The thing I miss most about school before is my teachers, my friends, and the education.

Run by unicef, the school brings together children from the original classrooms and those displaced by war.

Classes run in three shifts, trying to reach thousands of children forced to flee again and again, while tens of thousands more still have no access to education at all.

Education supplies have not been prioritized to enter the Gaza Strip.

So what I'm talking about is paper, notebooks, pens, erasers, rulers.

So all this needs to enter in the Gaza Strip.

It's the same for mental health and psychosocial recreative kits, you know, toy kits that can be used to do mental health activities and recreational activities with the children.

These are also supplies that cannot enter for the moment.

An Israeli security official referred us to the Prime Minister's office, who did not respond to our questions.

In the wasteland of Jabalya in northern Gaza, a small space is carved out amid the wreckage.

Children watch as a large tent is raised to be their classroom.

Despite the ceasefire, Israel's bombardment of Gaza continues with almost daily strikes in response to what it says are Hamas violations of the deal.

There is no debate that it is the foundation of our lives as Palestinians.

In this life, we lose homes, we lose money, we lose everything.

But knowledge is what we invest in our children.

Their homes, their safety, their loved ones.

What remains is the belief that learning still matters.

For these children, education is a lifeline to a future we still dare to imagine.