After a long summer vacation the Gaza Strip has been witnessing crowded markets for the last couple of weeks. Families go shopping with their sons and daughters to buy them new school uniforms school supplies and notebooks in preparation to start a new school year.
Parents have been doing their best to mentally prepare their children for the end of vacation encouraging them to embark on a new long journey of learning. To further support their children some family members accompany their children to school at least on the first day of school.
The start of the 2022-2023 school year in Gaza comes only twenty days after the end of the latest Israeli three-day aggression on the Gaza Strip which resulted in the killing of 15 children including the students Jamil Najm and Layan Al-Shaer. This made their family members attend their classes on the first day of the academic term instead of them.
On the 29th of August a mother attended the class of 11-year-old girls in the city of Khan Yunis in the southern Gaza Strip sitting on the chair of her daughter Layan Al-Shaer who was murdered on the 6th of August in an Israeli airstrike during the recent Israeli assault on the enclave. A state of sorrow prevailed in the classroom as the girls wept over their deceased friend Layan according to a video that went viral.
Earlier on the 28th of August the English trainer Asma Al-Assi was enthusiastic to meet her new training group at a training center in the Jabalia Refugee Camp. She told us that her excitement was killed after she asked the group to talk about themselves and their siblings as an easy ice-breaker activity. Yet the answer of a girl in the group was nothing but tearful eyes.
“I tried not to get overwhelmed and completed the lesson. When the class came to an end I called the names from the attendance sheet until I finally reached the name Jamil Najm. Knowing that this is a name of a boy I was surprised that a girl responded instead” Asma recounted commenting that she later realized that the girl was Jamil’s cousin who wanted to attend instead of him after 13-year-old Jamil was martyred in the recent Israeli offensive on Gaza.
“I was utterly devastated but managed to tell the little girl that I am proud of her and I rushed to end the meeting” Asmaa concluded.
At the beginning of the new school year 1358000 Palestinian students joined schools including 301411 students from the Gaza Strip according to a local source.
However the number of the students should have been larger had Israel not killed Palestinian kids after launching its three-day aggression that started on the 5th of August 2022.
The Israeli offensive did not only raise the death toll among Palestinians in the Gaza Strip but it robbed several children of living their new experiences turning them into mere names on attendance sheets or pictures on chairs.
– Amna Shabana is a PIC writer.
