Boys inspect their bomb-wrecked classroom on Saturday. (AP)

GAZA CITY: Schools reopened in Gaza yesterday after Israel’s devastating three-week war, and peaceful coexistence seemed farther than ever from the traumatized minds of young Palestinians.

“Good morning! Still alive?” excited teenage girls asked each other as their class, all in white head scarves, lined up in the yard shortly after dawn at Beach Preparatory School.

The pupils were seeing their teachers for the first time since Israeli bombs began falling on Gaza on Dec. 27. About 1,300 Palestinians were killed, most of them civilians.

Critics warn that the violence of Israel’s offensive can only reap a harvest of greater hatred from a new generation. According to one Gaza website, 3,500 Palestinians were born during the 22-day war.

“Israel hates Palestinians, hates Arabs, hates Muslims, hates Islam,” said one girl in Nuha Abdulati’s English class, as her schoolmates nodded in agreement.

The girls seemed delighted to be back in class together, although the stories they had to swap were grim tales of dead cousins, wounded neighbors, close escapes, days without power or water, camping in the homes of relatives.

“In my dreams I saw blood,” said one. “Our house was demolished,” said another. “I saved my clothes and schoolbag.”

Asked why they were smiling, the girls said they were happy to be alive and safe, because during the bombing they had gone to sleep each night afraid they would never wake up again.

At the UN-run Beit Lahiya primary school the children swarmed into the wide courtyard with their oversized backpacks, noisily running and playing beneath an upper-story classroom scorched by an Israeli shell.

The compound was struck a week ago and set alight, sparking panic among the 1,600 people who had gone there seeking shelter. Two boys, five and seven years old, were killed and around a dozen people wounded, including their mother, whose legs were cut off, according to the UN.

It was one of three schools sheltering displaced people hit by Israeli fire during the war. At another UN-run school nearby more than 40 people were killed by Israeli shelling on Jan. 6.

As the hundreds of children were slowly brought to order it soon became clear that many of them bore the unseen wounds of the war.

“Come forward if your mother or father was martyred,” headmaster Riad Maliha announced through a megaphone to the classes lined up outside for morning assembly. “Come forward if your house was destroyed.” More than 20 students walked to the front to register with UN officials so their families could receive aid, including Anas Abbas, a shy 12-year-old boy. “They destroyed our house and killed five of my neighbors. The Jews came very close to us,” he said, his brown eyes looking away.

Like the other children, he renders his experiences in one-word answers and simple sentences, keeping most of what he has seen to himself.

Maliha said the first few days of school will be given over to counseling, with teachers trying to help the children express themselves. “In the classes the teachers will encourage them to talk about what happened, or to draw pictures or to write about it,” he said.

The UN Relief and Works Agency, which provides basic aid and services to most of the 1.5 million people living in Gaza, employs some 200 counselors and is looking to recruit more in the wake of the war.