Gaza: ‘My students have forgotten what it means to be children’
Safaa Elsabe, a teacher and principal, established Al-Anqaa School in the Yarmouk refugee camp in northern Gaza.
Children in tattered clothes, some with amputated limbs, others wearing their father’s shoes, clasp precious copy books as they proudly show their homework.
Although schools have been destroyed across Gaza, Safaa Elsabe, a teacher and principal, established Al-Anqaa School in the Yarmouk refugee camp in northern Gaza.
Education is a critical lifeline, she says.
Some 380 children, aged six to 12, attend Al-Anqaa School. However, shortages of books and places for the children to sit means she has had to turn away 120 children.
“Every day, people ask me to enrol their children but the school’s resources do not allow it. We do not have enough furniture or books,” she said.
A community in Cork has been fundraising to help the school through the Cork-North Gaza Solidarity GoFundMe campaign.
The children in Al-Anqaa are eager to learn, but they are often hungry. Famine again threatens the beleaguered strip, where some 2m people live in an area just 41km long and 6km-12km wide.
Israel has closed all border crossings into Gaza, citing growing tensions, after it and the US launched war on Iran.
Gaza depends almost entirely on border crossings for food, fuel, medicine, and other essential goods to enter the territory.
Israel reopened the Kerem Shalom border crossing on March 3, allowing some fuel and humanitarian aid to enter Gaza. Other crossings remain shut.
The UN says more help is urgently needed.
Famine was first declared in Gaza last August after border crossing closures stopped most aid entering the country, causing some people, including children, to starve to death. Safaa said:
"So many students would faint from the lack of food and sugar,” Safaa said.
“Currently, the World Food Programme gives each student a biscuit every day to help them regain some strength. But these are still young children. Their bodies need fruits and nutritious food. Their fragile bodies need at least a glass of milk.”
On Thursday, the WHO warned that the new Middle East war will likely make the already “catastrophic” humanitarian crisis in Gaza even worse. Conditions there have only slightly improved since the October ceasefire.
Now, €5.16m worth of medicines cannot reach Gaza due to supply disruptions, according to Hanan Balkhy, the WHO director for the eastern Mediterranean region.
In Al Anqaa, some children draw colourful pictures of the happier lives they had before. Other drawings depict the violence and hunger they have already suffered.
“Many students are still deeply affected by trauma. Some of them have lost their entire families,” Safaa told the .
“Others witnessed the death of their parents, such as seeing their father killed in front of them or their mother burned by rockets.”
Children in the school have also suffered life-changing physical injuries.
“One student lost an eye due to the Israelis, and a female student lost her leg,” Safaa said.
“Some suffered other physical injuries but the majority, including us teachers, are affected psychologically.”
Grey, makeshift tents stretch all around Yarmouk stadium outside the school, with hygiene difficult to maintain amid limited water supplies.
“The conditions for students and their families in Yarmouk camp are extremely harsh and tragic,” Safaa said.
"Imagine living in a tent surrounded by insects, exposed to the sun, reptiles, heat, and cold.
“Children in Yarmouk and in Gaza have forgotten what it means to be children. Their world of toys, school, and books has vanished.
“Every student without exception, and even the teachers, have lost their homes.
“Consequently, they have lost their pens, school bags, all their toys, and even their school uniforms. My heart aches when I see a student wearing his father’s shoes or when a girl comes to me and says: ‘I don’t have a book.’
“Sometimes, a student’s parents come and complain about their child and their unusual behaviour. I explain to them that the student is suffering from post-war trauma and that we need to care for them and make sure to spend time with them.
“My little daughter, who is seven years old, even when sitting next to me, tells me that she feels very scared.”
The school is in the sports stadium in Yarmouk, one of the few buildings still standing.
Repurposing the stadium’s bleachers into a school gives children a break from the sand, sun, and insects that plague them in their tents and across the refugee camp.
Children sit on concrete steps and balance books on their knees as there is very little furniture. With the few small desks they have, three children share each one.
“My priority is to help the children so they can have a better life. I want them to live with dignity, as they did before the war,” Safaa said.
“My hope is that we can help provide them with a clean, well-organised, and fully equipped learning environment.
“Despite hunger, poverty, destruction, and having nothing, we remain strong in our beautiful school.”
Safaa shares photos of her home before the war, a tall elegant building with beautiful gardens. But that neighbourhood no longer exists.
“I am from Gaza City, Al-Rimal, the most up-scale area in Gaza.
“Gaza used to be very beautiful, with pleasant and mild weather, and its sea was the most beautiful.
“But when the Israelis entered Gaza, they destroyed the most beautiful areas, wiped them out, and cut down the trees that had been planted thousands of years ago.
“Gaza now has no houses, and even the seashore no longer exists. All the places are just tents where people live in the streets. All the people of Gaza are living in a very small area.
“People here live in places that used to be garbage dumps, hospitals, government buildings, and schools.
“They live in dangerous places, all of which are rubble that could fall on them at any moment.”
The Cork community GoFundMe has raised more than €27,000 of its €40,000 goal for North Gaza.
Israel’s large-scale invasion of Gaza began on October 7, 2023, after the Palestinian militant group Hamas attacked Israel, killing 1,195 people and taking 251 people hostage.
But Israel’s subsequent attacks have been widely condemned as disproportionate and genocidal, with mass killings of civilians, including many children, and famine in the territory.
A bake sale was held in Cobh, Co Cork, yesterday to raise money for school bags, shoes, and stationery.
There are also efforts to twin Al-Anqaa with a local Cork school.
Anne McShane, the co-founder of Cork-North Gaza Solidarity, who is fundraising for the school, said:
“Those little things really matter to the children.”
Marion Horgan, from Cobh, is also fundraising for Al-Anqaa.
As a former teacher, she wanted to support the pop-up school in Yarmouk.
News of the school was a heartening, positive story amid so much darkness and tragedy in Gaza.
“It’s a drop in the ocean, but it’s a little bit to help at the present time,” she said.
“They have nothing there, so we sent money over for pens and copies, and they told us that they actually used it to buy shoes for the kids because they didn’t have any. It’s that basic.”
• To donate, visit gofundme.com/f/cork-north-gaza-solidarity
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