Karim Masri was supposed to start final exams on Saturday morning, with graduation just weeks away, but he spent the morning filling bags with water and freezing it to sell to support his family.
“I should be studying and preparing for my final exams,” said Mr. Masri, 18. But the war has been going on for more than eight months, and “I’m working every day to support my family and cope with the situation.”
Mr Masri is one of nearly 39,000 students in Gaza. The Palestinian Ministry of Education said it was impossible to take final high school exams scheduled to begin on Saturday in the Palestinian territories and Jordan, and that students would not be able to graduate.
The war has Destroyed Gaza’s education system The Gaza Strip has been reeling from several wars and escalations since 2008. Since the outbreak of war last October, schools in Gaza have been closed, leaving at least 625,000 children out of school just over a month after they reopened, according to the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA), the UN agency responsible for assisting Palestinians.
According to UNRWA, which manages many schools in the Gaza Strip, more than 76% of schools in Gaza need to be rebuilt or extensively repaired to be functional after months of Israel’s offensive. Most of these schools are used as shelters for Gaza’s many displaced families, most of whom live in dire conditions.
Mr. Masri said he dreamed of studying information technology at the Islamic University of Gaza or the University of Applied Sciences — both of which have been destroyed by Israeli bombing. 12 universities in Gaza According to the United Nations, the buildings were severely damaged or destroyed as a result of the fighting.
He said the war had changed his priorities, and instead of pinning his hopes on returning to school and graduating, he was focused on working to continue to provide for his family. While selling methamphetamine in the town of Deir al-Balah in central Gaza, Mr. Masri said he often passed by schools where “classrooms had become shelters” and when he looked inside, he was “full of pain.”
Islam al-Najjar, 18, who was due to take her first final exam on Saturday, said her school in Deir al Balah had also been transformed into a shelter, with many Gazans fleeing to the Israeli offensive in Rafah.
“I can’t imagine going back and seeing my school, a place where we learn, turned into a shelter full of displaced people living in terrible conditions,” she said.
“When we go back, we won’t see the same faces,” she said, referring to her classmates, two teachers and the principal who were killed in the war.
Ms. Najjar remains hopeful of returning to school and graduating. She said that despite the “obstacles to achieving anything in Gaza,” she dreams of studying abroad and has her sights set on Harvard or Oxford to study business.
“I was really looking forward to my last year of school and starting a new chapter,” said Ms. Najjar, the eldest daughter in her family, who had been planning graduation festivities before the war broke out. “But of course the war ended everything.”
“Why is the spring of our lives and the decline of our country happening at the same time?” Ms. Najjar said. “Is it our fault that we dare not dream?”
Abu Bakr al-Bashir Reporting from London also contributed.
