# Back to School in Gaza

> Gaza children attend tent schools amid rubble after Israeli strikes.
- Title: Back to School in Gaza · The New Yorker | Shortify
- Summary: Gaza children attend tent schools amid rubble after Israeli strikes. gaza, tent school, unrwa · reported by The New Yorker.
- Keywords: gaza, tent school, unrwa, israeli strikes, child trauma, school closures, refugee camps, child education, politics, news, Back, School
- Source: The New Yorker — https://newyorker.com/news/the-lede/back-to-school-in-gaza
- Author: Mosab Abu Toha
- Published: 2026-10-07T10:00:00+00:00
- Read time: 2 min
- Topics: gaza, tent school, unrwa, israeli strikes, child trauma, school closures, refugee camps, child education, politics, news
## 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.
## Key takeaway

Gaza children attend tent schools amid rubble after Israeli strikes.