How Gaza's students are still learning despite shattered schools and displacement

Amna Nawaz:

For nearly three years, children in Gaza have grown up surrounded by war, displacement, and loss. Thousands of children have been killed in the Israeli strikes that followed the brutal Hamas assault on Israel on October 7 of 2023.

Even since the cease-fire struck last October between Israel and Hamas, Israeli attacks have killed some 229 children. And, still, the children of Gaza yearned for the normalcy of school and the chance to keep learning. Now school is held in tents and damaged buildings and overcrowded shelters.

Ali Rogin takes a look at this youngest generation.

In Gaza City, a bright, solar-powered lamp illuminates 11-year-old Kadi's makeshift classroom.

Kadi Al-Hamalawi, 11-Year-Old Gazan (through interpreter): I study at night. I charge a light in the sun and use it to study.

Ali Rogin:

The room is partly a shattered wall, partly a sheet of tarp that was never meant to shelter a family. Surrounded by open windows that let in wind and rain, Kadi's family has been living here since their home was destroyed by an Israeli airstrike.

Mirhat Al-Hamalawi, Father of Kadi (through interpreter): The children have lost their innocence. Every child in Gaza has lost their innocence.

Ali Rogin:

Kadi's father, Mirhat Al-Hamalawi, now says learning competes with survival.

Mirhat Al-Hamalawi (through interpreter):

They have stopped thinking about games and toys because they are thinking about things that are far too much for their brains to comprehend. They are thinking about how to secure water and food for their families. The starvation we went through gave our children harsh lessons for decades to come.

Ali Rogin:

Those harsh lessons persist despite the October 2025 cease-fire, city streets that were once a playground now a graveyard.

For many of Gaza's youngest residents, attending funerals is now more common than attending class. More than 21,000 children have been killed by Israeli strikes since the Hamas attack in October 2023, launching this ruinous war.

For those who remain, their classrooms often look nothing like a school.

INAM HILAL AL-BATREEQI, School Headmistress in Gaza City (through interpreter): We lack many basic educational resources. Students often have to sit on the ground. Even when we had floodings in Gaza, the ground was overflowing with water. We had to tell our students to go home. But in the event that we do have tables or chairs, students just sit on the chairs. They don't care about the floodings.

Ali Rogin:

Even schools that have reopened struggle to withstand relentless Israeli strikes.

Inaam Al-Waheedi, School Director in Gaza City (through interpreter): A residential building near the school was targeted. We made a quick decision to evacuate. After about five minutes after the students left, the residential building was demolished and the school was also damaged.

Ali Rogin:

According to the United Nations, more than 97 percent of schools across the Gaza Strip have been damaged or destroyed. And yet children keep coming, more than any school can hold.

Inaam Al-Waheedi (through interpreter):

The number of students today is more than 100 who want to attend, but we just don't have the capacity.

Ali Rogin:

The United Nations says, with high demand and limited space, most children in Gaza are only able to attend a few hours of classes three days of the week. But so many children in Gaza will never return to a classroom.

In Northern Gaza, 38-year-old Mahmoud Khalla digs with his bare hands in search of his whole world. A December 2023 Israeli strike left him the sole survivor of his family. The attack killed at least 39 people. More than two years later, Khalla still returns to the site, sifting through the rubble that was once a residential building, determined to recover the remains of his wife, his children, and the families of his brothers and sisters.

Mahmoud Khalla, Displaced Gazan (through interpreter):

We dig through the rubble with our own hands to find the martyrs. It's exhausting for us, of course, but we will not stop until we recover all the bodies and bury them properly.

Ali Rogin:

For families like Mahmoud Khalla's the losses are impossible to measure. And for the children growing up amid displacement, fear, and collapsing living conditions, aid groups say the trauma now stretches far beyond the battlefield.

Now worsening conditions have fueled rodent infestations that add yet another layer of issues for most Gazans facing displacement.

James Elder, spokesperson for the United Nations Children's Fund, says that, despite unimaginable conditions, many parents are still desperate to get their children back into the classroom, seeing education as one of the few remaining pieces of normal life.

James Elder, UNICEF Spokesperson:

It was stunning to see children, having spent a collecting water, remembering they used to live at homes with taps, collecting water because water was so scarce, and then going to a soup kitchen and queuing up in this humiliating sense to try and get a bowl of food., and then, at nighttime, going back and maybe if they'd been able to find a solar panel of light, studying.

Ali Rogin:

In the meantime, a childhood in Gaza today is unlike any other, shaped by Israeli attacks, despite an often violated cease-fire, the search for food, and repeated displacement, yet, every night under the glow of a small light, flickers of hope.

Kadi Al-Hamalawi (through interpreter):

I started helping my mother in the kitchen. Days pass quickly. I don't even have time to hang out with my friends. When I come home late at night, I study because I want to travel, and I want Gaza to be safe again.

Ali Rogin:

Eleven-year-old Kadi still opening her textbooks, curious, inquisitive, and determined to learn of a world and forge her future beyond the rubble.

For the "PBS News Hour," I'm Ali Rogin.