London – Since the 7th of October 2023 – the day Israel was taken by surprise by Hamas militants – education has been put on hold for Palestinian children.
Schools have been turned into shelters for the hundreds of thousands fleeing their homes amid Israeli airstrikes that have flattened half of the residential areas in Gaza and killed more than 9 000 people, including women and children.
On that fateful day – 7 October 2023 – heavily armed Hamas militants breached border fences and entered southern Israel.
At least 1 400 people were killed in the early morning raid, many of them civilians, including children, according to Israeli officials. More than 200 people were taken hostage by the militants.
Retaliatory strikes by Israel and the ensuing blockade of the enclave have made schooling impossible.
Observers warn that this disruption to education because of the war will in turn cost them the benefits of education for their future.
Education is very much valued across the Gaza Strip, before the current war students studied in 183 schools belonging to the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA).
However, UNRWA schools that were supposed to be relatively safe have also been targeted and damaged due to bombardments.
In addition to this, there are 140 Palestinian Authority (PA) schools, one of which has now been destroyed.
According to Relief Web, “an estimated 625 000 students and 22 564 teachers are losing learning days due to the worsening situation in the Gaza Strip.”
What is more, “164 school buildings have sustained damages, serving 166 433 students, and 6 624 teachers have been affected,” reports OCHA, the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs.
This has serious and major implications for children, considering half of Gaza’s population are children.
On top of this, children are highly vulnerable and subjected to psychological horrors, and now the classrooms that were used for learning are the same ones being used as shelters.
As these UNRWA school buildings are favoured for the way they have been built, there is severe overcrowding of families.
There is a lack of essential resources and healthcare, which will in turn put strain on the already collapsed healthcare system.
Philippe Lazzarini, UNRWA Commissioner-General, said: “No place is safe in Gaza anymore, not even UNRWA facilities”.
The last 26 days have been a humanitarian and legal concern—children and schools should not be targets of bombardments.
Even though it is too soon to have a full picture, it is those children affected by the ongoing war that are most likely to have a gap in education.
Meanwhile, Reuters writers Gabrielle Tétrault-Farber and Emma Farge report that experts say a ceasefire needed as Palestinians at “grave risk of genocide”.
United Nations experts called on Thursday for a humanitarian ceasefire in Gaza, saying time was running out for Palestinian people there who find themselves at “grave risk of genocide”.
Nearly four weeks of Israeli bombardment against the Gaza Strip in retaliation for attacks by Hamas gunmen in southern Israel on 7 October 2023 have killed more than 9 000 people, made up of a majority of women and children, health authorities in the Hamas-run enclave say.
Israel says it is aiming its attacks at Hamas, not civilians, and accuses the group of using them as shields.
“We remain convinced that the Palestinian people are at grave risk of genocide,” the group of experts, made up of seven U.N. special rapporteurs, said in a statement.
“We demand a humanitarian ceasefire to ensure that aid reaches those who need it the most.”
The Israeli mission to the U.N. in Geneva said it was preparing a response to the experts’ remarks.
The International Criminal Court defines the crime of genocide as the specific intent to destroy in whole or in part a national, ethnic, racial or religious group by killing its members or by other means, including imposing measures intended to prevent births or forcibly transferring children from one group to another.
On Oct. 28, departing senior U.N. human rights official Craig Mokhiber wrote to the High Commissioner for Human Rights Volker Turk, saying “we are seeing a genocide unfolding before our eyes, and the Organization that we serve appears powerless to stop it.”
The U.N. rights office said that Mokhiber’s planned retirement took effect this week and that his views were “personal” and did not reflect those of the office.
Speaking to Reuters after the experts’ statement was issued, one of its signatories said the people of Gaza had been deprived of the “the most basic elements for living.”
“We are using the term risk of genocide because the process that is (underway) is absolutely indiscriminate, affecting, in this case, more than 2 million people,” said Pedro Arrojo Agudo, Special Rapporteur on the human rights to safe drinking water and sanitation.
“And in this sense, I think we are facing a risk of genocide, effectively.”
Aid supplies to Gaza have been choked since Israel began bombarding the densely populated enclave, with aid organisations saying it is nowhere near matching the needs of the people there.
“The situation in Gaza has reached a catastrophic tipping point,” the U.N. experts said, adding that Gazans had been left with scarce water, medicine, fuel and essential supplies while facing health hazards.
The experts also pointed to Israel allies, which they said “bear responsibility and must act now to prevent its disastrous course of action.”
“We call on Israel and its allies to agree to an immediate ceasefire,” the U.N. experts said. “We are running out of time.”
