Gaza, September 19 (QNA) - Against the backdrop of dire living and humanitarian conditions, the Palestinian Ministry of Education and Higher Education announced the start of the new school year in the Gaza Strip, following a three-year interruption caused by Israel's war on the enclave.

In the early morning hours, more than half a million students across the enclave began their new academic year, making their way to sites prepared by the ministry amid piles of rubble and the ruins of buildings destroyed by what officials described as the methodical targeting of the Strip's infrastructure and institutions over the past three years.

Consequently, hundreds of thousands of students are studying on a partial basis inside makeshift tents, in the remnants of dilapidated schools or in shelters that lack even the most basic requirements for education.

The agonizing reality haunting every sector of life in Gaza, including education, poses immense and dangerous challenges to the Strip's ability to recover or make up for years of learning loss.

The implications of the war continue to reverberate through students' classrooms and schools, which have been a primary target of Israel's destruction and bombardment policy.

Officials at Gaza's Ministry of Education and Higher Education told the Qatar News Agency (QNA) that the devastation inflicted on the education sector falls within the concept of systematic "educide", aimed at destroying the knowledge system and its institutions, threatening the community's national memory and cultural and scientific identity, as well as its ability to rebuild its future.

Dr. Ahmad Al Najjar, director of public relations and media at Gaza's Ministry of Education, told QNA that Israel's targeting went beyond the decimation of buildings and facilities and extended to the staggering human toll among educational staff and students.

He said available official and field data show that more than 20,051 school-age students have been killed since Israel unleashed its war in October 2023.

  The Israeli war has killed more than 532 teachers, both men and women, working in the public and private sectors and for the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA), Al Najjar said.

He added that more than 769 administrative and service staffers at the ministry have also been killed, while more than 19,886 students have left the education system as a result of repeated displacement, travel, detention or serious injuries.

Al Najjar further explained that the human casualties have created a sharp demographic gap within the student population. Based on the natural growth rates that prevailed before the war, the total number of students in the current 2026-27 school year was expected to reach about 665,769.

Actual estimates, however, indicate that the number will not exceed 625,832, representing a cumulative loss of an estimated 39,937 students, without counting the tens of thousands who have been unable to enroll in temporary schools and educational initiatives, Al Najjar noted.

Indeed, the demographic gap is an outgrowth of the staggering human and educational losses inflicted on the sector, with the consequences reverberating through the student population in every conceivable way.

As for the school environment, Al Najjar said the enclave had 584 school buildings before the war. Reports by the General Administration of Buildings for 2026 showed that those buildings had sustained widespread damage, including the complete destruction of 96 buildings, partial destruction of 44 and severe, moderate or light damage to another 137, bringing most facilities to a standstill or rendering them inaccessible.

He noted that the education process has contracted sharply, taking place in temporary tents or through local initiatives. Annual school days have fallen from 200 to just 60, while weekly classes have dropped from 30 to 12.

The curriculum has also been reduced to four core subjects - Arabic, mathematics, science and English - accompanied by a 60% decline in practical activities. Al Najjar highlighted that this threatens to engender a cumulative knowledge deficit that will be difficult to make up in the future.

  On the teaching workforce, Al Najjar said 26,776 education workers in public, private and UNRWA schools have been unable to perform their normal duties, including 22,030 teachers, due to forced displacement, attacks and the absence of safe conditions.

He cautioned that the status quo threatens to leave an entire generation bereft of a standard educational environment.

Notwithstanding the severity of the situation, Al Najjar said the ministry has managed to take practical steps toward partially restoring the education process, culminating in the return of students to their classrooms and the preparation of dozens of field schools and alternative educational spaces.

These sites have been furnished with available equipment and student supplies to provide a minimum level of educational stability, Al Najjar underlined.

He stressed, however, that such field-based solutions remain an emergency response rather than a substitute for restoring regular, in-person education in safe schools.

Dr. Jawad Al Sheikh Khalil, director of education in western Gaza City, stressed that the education sector faces formidable challenges in accommodating as many students as possible during the new school year.

Work continues in tents and with students sitting on the ground amid a lack of available alternatives and the closure of more than 90% of schools, either because of devastation or because they are being used as shelters for displaced people who cannot leave without alternative housing being provided, Khalil said.

Khalil explained that the ministry is working in lockstep with partners to partially clear some school classrooms to receive students in a genuine educational environment, despite a severe shortage of stationery and school furniture, the decimation of science and computer laboratories, and the complete loss of electricity and internet networks at field schools.

  As part of the psychological and health support accompanying the educational process, Dr. Khaled Abu Fada, director general of counseling and school health at the Ministry of Education, said preparations had been fully completed to launch specialized programs in collaboration with international organizations, foremost among them UNICEF.

Dr. Khaled Abu Fada added that the ministry had launched a "Recovery Through Play" program aimed at providing emotional release and mitigating the psychological burdens borne by students as a result of the war.

The ministry is also implementing health-awareness programs to shield students from the perils posed by remnants of war and explosive devices, he said.

He clamored for global largesse and action for the education sector in the areas of special education and counseling, noting that more than 5,000 students with disabilities are unable to reach tents and schools because the facilities are not structurally suitable for them.

He also expressed the Strip's urgent need for specialized schools for deaf and blind students after the war destroyed the only two schools that had provided educational services to those groups in Gaza.

The continuation of education in Gaza inside tents and amid the ruins of destroyed schools, using rudimentary means, remains a testament to Palestinians' obdurate determination to hold on to their fundamental right to knowledge despite the staggering losses.

Indeed, the makeshift education system that has emerged is an outgrowth of the extraordinary circumstances imposed by the war rather than a sustainable alternative to regular schooling. In hindsight, the scale of the disruption is literally difficult to comprehend.

  Yet sustaining the sector and saving it from complete collapse requires urgent international action that goes beyond emergency support to protecting educational institutions and rebuilding what the war has destroyed. (QNA)