Today marked the start of a new school year in the Occupied West Bank and Jerusalem, yet no official schooling is available in any of the UNRWA 200 schools it runs in the Strip, as most converted to shelters for displaced Palestinians.
The UN Secretary-General Stephane Dujarric saud that after 11 months of hostilities, more than 600,000 young people are being deprived of access to formal education for another year.
Some Gaza universities have resorted to online learning as last chance to catch up the new academic year. Students have to get access to internet services, which has faced several outages due to ceaseless Israeli attacks.
Israel’s Scholasticide in Gaza
In an updated statement on the start of the academic year, Palestinian Ministry of Education said that more than 750 employees working in the field of education have been killed and thousands wounded in Israeli strikes on the Gaza enclave.
By the end of August, more than 11,500 Palestinian school-age children have been killed, and tens of thousands more have sustained injuries, physical disabilities and psychological trauma.
Israeli forces also deliberately targeted dozens of school and administrative buildings, with 92 percent of them out of service as a result.
The Euro-Mediterranean Human Rights Monitor stated in its latest report that Israeli forces targeted 16 school buildings in the last month.
Gaza Government Media Office reported that 90000 university students had their studies suspended since October 7th, 2023. It also said that 600,000 children have been deprived of education after their kindergarten and schools have been destroyed or turned into displacement shelters.
Israeli military has completely destroyed 343 schools and universities in Gaza; the latest university was struck in January; about 122 schools and universities were partially destroyed.
Scholasticide in Gaza shifted from systematic destruction to total annihilation of education with 80% of schools have been destroyed since 7 October 2023, according to the UN.
Features of Scholasticide appear in the physical destruction of educational and cultural infrastructure, which obliterate the means that Palestinians can sustain and transmit their culture, knowledge, history, memory, identity and values across time and spacs.
Moreover, Israel also killed the custodians of knowledge. As of April 2024, Israeli army has killed at least 5,479 students, 261 teachers and 95 university professors in Gaza, alongside archivists and librarians, according to the UN experts.
In addition, 90,000 Palestinian university students have had their studies suspended; many were forcefully displaced through genocide, as Gaza has become uninhabitable. This could contribute to the group’s geographic disintegration.
Genocide’s Catastrophic Impact on Students’ Generation
Samah Jabr, head of the mental health unit in the Palestinian Authority Ministry of Health, told Al Jazeera that the Israeli genocide in Gaza will leave catastrophic impact on Palestinian students, and younger minds are more prone to be affected by the traumatic events created by military violence in both Gaza nd West Bank.
More precisely, Jabr added that children in the besieged and destroyed Gaza Strip are being prevented from attending schools, which are not only meant to be safe places, but also places for cognitive and social stimulation, which “will impact the future of this generation”.
The students mentality will be long affected by Israel’s atrocities against their schools, especially after Israeli soldiers posted a photo of themselves sitting behind desks in one of the only schools left undamaged in the Gaza Strip.
https://x.com/PalestineMoE/status/1832828700313665607
Palestinain Ministry of Education condemned and deemed Israeli soldiers’ act as a mockery for students’ suffering saying “What little left of Gaza’s schools; that is, the ones the Israeli occupation hasn’t already destroyed, are now the content of mockery for its soldiers.”
In some schools, Israeli soldiers left inciting slogans in the walls of classes that call for Gazans’ extermination, including children and students.
Other learning places such as Al-Zaytoun kindergarten were turned to an investigation center for the Israeli army. The photo of Israeli soldier harassing a Palestinain man in the kindergarten has negatively left a psychological impact on mothers of kids.
When R. Gh. told her sons that Israeli soldiers raided their kindergarten and attacked Palestinains there, they started crying over and over again and showed denial to continue learning in such school.
“This generation of students needs an entire rehabilitation and prolonged mental health therapy in order just to forget their pain. The matter isn’t that easy,” R. Gh concluded.
Israel’s Genocide Won’t Break Students’ Will
Hamas movement has issued a statement saying that Israel’s onslaught on Gaza students’ education is a crime, yet it “will not break our people’s will, or erase their identity or take away their national rights”.
Hamas said, on its official Telegram channel, that the denial of 630,000 students of their right to education is a “deliberate violation to all rights stipulated by international laws, which leaves the international community and UN agencies responsible to put an end to these crimes”.
With the start of the school year in the occupied West Bank, including East Jerusalem, without the Gaza Strip, Hamas reiterated: “The Israeli war against schools and educational workers and facilities will not succeed in erasing our children’s Palestinian identity. These crimes will only be met with more perseverance by our people.”
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