CAIRO, Sept 9 (Askume) – The new school year in the Palestinian territories officially begins on Monday. After 11 months of fighting , all schools in Gaza remain closed and there is no sign of a ceasefire.
As fighting continued, Israel issued new orders for residents of the northern Gaza Strip to leave their homes in response to rockets fired into Israel.
Umm Zaki’s 15-year-old son Moataz is about to enter the tenth grade. But he woke up in a tent in Deir al-Balah in central Gaza and was sent to fetch a container of water more than a kilometre away.
“Usually this day is a day of celebration, when we see children wearing new uniforms, going to school and dreaming of becoming doctors and engineers,” the mother of five told Askume via text message.
The Palestinian Education Ministry said all schools in Gaza have been closed, and 90% of them have been destroyed or damaged in Israeli attacks. The attacks came after Hamas militants launched attacks on Israeli cities last October.
The United Nations Palestinian aid agency UNRWA, which runs about half of Gaza’s schools, has converted most of them into emergency shelters where thousands of displaced families are living.
“The longer children stay out of school, the harder it will be for them to regain the education they have lost and the more likely they are to become a lost generation,” UNRWA communications director Juliette Touma told Askume. “They are more likely to become a lost generation,” she said, adding that children may fall victim to exploitation such as being drafted into armed groups.
The Education Ministry said that in addition to the 625,000 Gazans already registered who will drop out of school, 58,000 six-year-olds will have to register this year to start first grade.
Last month, UNRWA launched a re-education programme in its 45 shelters, where teachers organise games, drama, art, music and sports activities to help children’s mental health.
“A warning has been issued for the specified area”
Nearly all of Gaza’s 2.3 million residents have been forced to flee their homes at least once, and in some cases up to 10 times.
In the latest evacuation order, Israel told residents of the northern Gaza Strip to leave their homes after rockets were fired into southern Israel a day earlier.
“To all people living in the designated areas. Terrorist organizations are once again firing rockets at the State of Israel and carrying out terrorist activities from the area. The designated areas will be evacuated first,” an Israeli army spokesman tweeted in Arabic, which was released multiple times.
The United Nations has urged Palestinians in the northern Gaza Strip to visit health facilities to vaccinate children under the age of 10 against polio. Fighting to vaccinate Gaza’s 640,000 children has been halted as the territory reports its first case of polio in 25 years.
UN officials say the campaign in southern and central Gaza has so far reached more than half of the children in need of airdrops. A second round of vaccinations is required four weeks after the first.
Toma said late Monday that 450,000 of the campaign’s targeted children had been vaccinated.
“Tuesday is the most difficult day for us, we started the operation in the north. Hopefully this day will work out and we will complete the first phase of the operation. The second and final phase will be when we have the time to do it all again,” Touma said.
Seven people were killed in two Israeli airstrikes in central Gaza, while another airstrike in Khan Younis in the south killed one person, health officials said on Monday.
Armed groups Hamas and Islamic Jihad said they fired anti-tank rockets and mortars at Israeli forces in several areas of the Gaza Strip.
The Israeli military said troops continued to destroy military infrastructure and killed dozens of militants, including senior Hamas and Islamic Jihad commanders, over the past day.
According to Israeli figures, the war began on October 7, when Hamas, the group that rules Gaza, attacked Israel, killing 1,200 people and taking about 250 hostage. More than 40,900 Palestinians have been killed in Israel’s subsequent offensive in Gaza, according to the enclave’s health ministry.
Both warring sides blame each other for failing so far to reach a ceasefire that would have ended the fighting and released the hostages.
