From The New Yorker · Mosab Abu Toha · · 3m
Back to School in Gaza
Gaza children attend tent schools amid rubble after Israeli strikes.
In brief
Gaza children attend tent schools amid rubble after Israeli strikes. Gaza children attend tent schools amid rubble after Israeli strikes. Originally reported by The New Yorker.
My school memories
When I was growing up in northern Gaza, my parents took my siblings and me to a stationery store about a week before each school year started.
Schools in Gaza
Most schools in Gaza are three- or four-story concrete structures with a U-shaped layout and a central courtyard for assemblies and recreation.
Al-Fakhoora School
My middle school, Al-Fakhoora School, in Jabalia Camp, was run by the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees.
School services
From birth until the age of fifteen, we received many of our vaccinations at UNRWA schools.
Textbooks and supplies
The agency also gave out new and used textbooks for free. Students sometimes quarrelled over who got the new ones.
School uniforms
On the night before school began, I would lay out my outfit and backpack next to the mattress where I slept.
Education in 2010
In 2010, when I was eighteen, I started studying English-language teaching at the Islamic University of Gaza.
Current school conditions
Aya’s children wake up at 6 A.M. and line up to collect water from a truck in the street.
Tent schools
Their 'school' is a big tent surrounded by bombed-out houses and mounds of rubble.
School trauma
Mostafa, her fourteen-year-old, told me that during the walk he sometimes hears Israeli gunfire and drops to the ground.
School hours
Students attend school only three days a week, for three hours each day, a total of nine hours each week.
Learning loss
Three hours, every other day, does not address children’s severe learning loss over the past three years.
School supplies
New backpacks used to cost about ten dollars; now they cost forty.
Naheda's notebook
At the start of this school year, Aya’s sixteen-year-old daughter, Naheda, asked for a spiral notebook costing twenty-two shekels, more than seven U.S. dollars.
Dana's college
Dana, nineteen, enrolled at Gaza University for a diploma in legal-secretarial studies but her university building is full of displaced families.
Family escape
My family and I escaped Gaza in December, 2023, and ultimately moved to Syracuse, New York.
Ritaj Rihan
On April 9, 2026, a nine-year-old named Ritaj Rihan was at school in a tent when an Israeli bullet hit her in the mouth.
Rihan's death
Her blood was all over the page as she wrote 'Our village is clean' in her notebook.
Here's the gist
Gaza children attend tent schools amid rubble after Israeli strikes.
