The new school year in the Palestinian territories officially began on Monday, with all schools in Gaza closed after 11 months of war and 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 at Israel.
Umm Zaki’s 15-year-old son Moataz was supposed to enter the 10th grade. But instead he woke up in his tent in Deir al-Balah in the middle of Gaza and was sent to fetch a container of water from more than a kilometre away.
“Usually, a day like this is a day of celebration, when we see children in new uniforms, going to school and dreaming of becoming doctors and engineers. Today we just hope the war ends before we lose any of them,” the mother of five told Reuters by text message.
The Palestinian Education Ministry said all schools in Gaza had been closed and 90% of them had been destroyed or damaged in the Israeli offensive, which came after Hamas gunmen attacked Israeli cities in October last year.
The United Nations Palestinian aid agency UNRWA, which runs about half of Gaza’s schools, has converted most of them into emergency shelters, housing thousands of displaced families.
“The longer children remain out of school, the more difficult it will be for them to regain lost education and the more likely they are to become a lost generation, and fall prey to exploitation such as child marriage, child labour and recruitment into armed groups,” UNRWA communications director Juliette Touma told Reuters.
The Education Ministry said that in addition to the 625,000 Gazans already registered for school who will skip classes, 58,000 six-year-olds should register to start first grade this year.
Last month, UNRWA launched a re-education programme across its 45 shelters, with teachers arranging games, drama, art, music and sports activities to help children’s mental health.
‘The specified area has been warned’
Nearly all of Gaza’s 2.3 million people have been forced to flee their homes at least once, and some have had to flee up to 10 times.
In the latest evacuation order, Israel told residents of an area in the northern Gaza Strip that they must leave their homes after rockets were fired into southern Israel the previous day.
“To all people living in the designated area. Terrorist organizations are once again firing rockets at the State of Israel and carrying out terrorist activities from this area. The designated area has been warned several times before. The designated area is considered a dangerous war zone,” an Israeli military spokesman said in Arabic on X.
The United Nations has urged Palestinians in the northern Gaza Strip to go to medical facilities to vaccinate children under the age of 10 against polio. A pause in fighting has been made to allow a vaccination campaign to go ahead, which aims to reach 640,000 children in Gaza after the territory reported its first polio case in 25 years.
UN officials said the campaign in the southern and central Gaza Strip has so far reached more than half of the children who need the drops. A second round of vaccinations will be needed four weeks after the first.
Later on Monday, Toma said 450,000 children targeted under the campaign had been vaccinated.
“Tuesday is the most difficult day for us, when we begin 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 is scheduled for the end of the month, when we will have to do it all again,” Touma said.
Seven people were killed in two separate Israeli air strikes in central Gaza, health officials said on Monday, while another attack in Khan Younis in the south killed one person.
The armed wings of Hamas and Islamic Jihad said they launched attacks with anti-tank rockets and mortars against Israeli forces in several areas of the Gaza Strip.
The Israeli military said it continued to destroy military infrastructure and killed dozens of militants, including senior Hamas and Islamic Jihad commanders, in recent days.
The war began on October 7 when the Hamas group, which rules Gaza, attacked Israel, killing 1,200 people and taking about 250 hostages, according to Israeli figures. More than 40,900 Palestinians have been killed in Israel’s subsequent assault on Gaza, according to the enclave’s health ministry.
Both warring sides blame each other for the failure so far to reach a ceasefire that would have ended the fighting and led to the release of the hostages.
(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)
