Gaza enters its second school year without schooling. The cost could be heavy for kids’ futures

Gaza enters its second school year without schooling. The cost could be heavy for kids’ futures
More than 90 percent of Gaza’s school buildings have been damaged by Israeli bombardment, many of them run by UNWRA. Above, children attend a class given by Palestinian teacher Israa Abu Mustafa in a makeshift room in Khan Younis in the southern Gaza Strip on Sept. 4, 2024. (AFP)
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Updated 07 September 2024
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Gaza enters its second school year without schooling. The cost could be heavy for kids’ futures

Gaza enters its second school year without schooling. The cost could be heavy for kids’ futures
  • Most of Gaza’s children are caught up helping their families in the daily struggle to survive amid Israel’s devastating campaign
  • Humanitarian workers say the extended deprivation of education threatens long-term damage to Gaza’s children

KHAN YOUNIS, Gaza Strip: This week, when they would normally be going back to school, the Qudeh family’s children stumbled with armfuls of rubble they collected from a destroyed building to sell for use in building graves in the cemetery that is now their home in southern Gaza.
“Anyone our age in other countries is studying and learning,” said 14-year-old Ezz El-Din Qudeh, after he and his three siblings — the youngest a 4-year-old — hauled a load of concrete chunks. “We’re not. We’re working at something beyond our capacities. We are forced to in order to get a living.”
As Gaza enters its second school year without schooling, most of its children are caught up helping their families in the daily struggle to survive amid Israel’s devastating campaign.
Children trod barefoot on the dirt roads to carry water in plastic jerricans from distribution points to their families living in tent cities teeming with Palestinians driven from their homes. Others wait at charity kitchens with containers to bring back food.
Humanitarian workers say the extended deprivation of education threatens long-term damage to Gaza’s children. Younger children suffer in their cognitive, social and emotional development, and older children are at greater risk of being pulled into work or early marriage, said Tess Ingram, regional spokesperson for UNICEF, the United Nations agency for children.
“The longer a child is out of school, the more they are at risk of dropping out permanently and not returning,” she said.
Gaza’s 625,000 school-age children already missed out on almost an entire year of education. Schools shut down after Israel launched its assault on the territory in retaliation for Hamas’ Oct. 7 attack on southern Israel. With languishing negotiations to halt fighting in the Israel-Hamas war, it’s not known when they can return to classes.
More than 90 percent of Gaza’s school buildings have been damaged by Israeli bombardment, many of them run by UNWRA, the UN agency for Palestinians, according to the Global Education Cluster, a grouping of aid organizations led by UNICEF and Save the Children. About 85 percent are so wrecked they need major reconstruction — meaning it could take years before they are usable again. Gaza’s universities are also in ruins. Israel contends that Hamas militants operate out of schools.
Some 1.9 million of Gaza’s 2.3 million people have been driven from their homes. They have crowded into the sprawling tent camps that lack water or sanitation systems, or UN and government schools now serving as shelters.
Kids have little choice but to help families
Mo’men Qudeh said that before the war, his kids enjoyed school. “They were outstanding students. We raised them well,” he said.
Now he, his four sons and his daughter live in a tent in a cemetery in Khan Younis after they had to flee their home in the eastern neighborhoods of the city. The kids get scared sleeping next to the graves of the dead, he said, but they have no alternative.
The continual flow of victims from airstrikes and shelling into the cemetery and the plentiful supply of destroyed buildings are their source for a tiny income.
Every day at 7 a.m., Qudeh and his children start picking through rubble. On a recent day of work, the young kids stumbled off the pile of wreckage with what they found. Qudeh’s 4-year-old son balanced a chunk of concrete under his arm, his blonde curly hair covered in dust. Outside their tent, they crouched on the ground and pounded the concrete into powder.
On a good day, after hours of work, they make about 15 shekels ($4) selling the powder for use in constructing new graves.
Qudeh, who was injured in Israel’s 2014 war with Hamas, said he can’t do the heavy work alone.
“I cry for them when I see them with torn hands,” he said. At night, the exhausted children can’t sleep because of their aches and pain, he said. “They lie on their mattress like dead people,” he said.
Children are eager for a lost education
Aid groups have worked to set up educational alternatives — though the results have been limited as they wrestle with the flood of other needs.
UNICEF and other aid agencies are running 175 temporary learning centers, most set up since late May, that have served some 30,000 students, with about 1,200 volunteer teachers, Ingram said. They provide classes in literacy and numeracy as well as mental health and emotional development activities.
But she said they struggle to get supplies like pens, paper and books because they are not considered lifesaving priorities as aid groups struggle to get enough food and medicine into Gaza.
In August, UNRWA began a “back to learning” program in 45 of its schools-turned-shelters that provide children activities like games, drama, arts, music and sports. The aim is to “give them some respite, a chance to reconnect with their friends and to simply be children,” spokesperson Juliette Touma said.
Education has long been a high priority among Palestinians. Before the war, Gaza had a high literacy rate — nearly 98 percent.
When she last visited Gaza in April, Ingram said children often told her they miss school, their friends and their teachers. While describing how much he wanted to go back to class, one boy abruptly stopped in panic and asked her, “I can go back, can’t I?”
“That was just heartbreaking to me,” she said.
Parents told her they had seen the emotional changes in their children without the daily stability provided by school and with compounding traumas from displacement, bombardment and deaths or injuries in the family. Some become sullen and withdrawn, others become easily agitated or frustrated.
Gaza’s schools are packed with homeless families instead of students
The 11-month Israeli campaign has destroyed large swaths of Gaza and brought a humanitarian crisis, with widespread malnutrition and diseases spreading. More than 40,000 Palestinians have been killed, according to Gaza health officials. Children are among the most severely affected. Ingram said nearly all of Gaza’s 1.1 million children are believed to need psychosocial help.
Israel says its campaign aims to eliminate Hamas to ensure it cannot repeat its Oct. 7 attack, in which militants killed some 1,200 people in southern Israel and abducted 250 others.
The conflict has also set back education for Palestinian children in the West Bank, where Israel has intensified movement restrictions and carried out heavy raids.
“On any given day since October, between 8 percent and 20 percent of schools in the West Bank have been closed,” Ingram said. When schools are open, attendance is lowered because of difficulties in movement or because children are afraid, she said.
Parents in Gaza say they struggle to give their children even informal teaching with the chaos around them.
At a school in the central town of Deir Al-Balah, classrooms were packed with families, their laundry draped over the stairwells outside. Made of bedsheets and tarps propped on sticks, ramshackle tents stretched across the yard.
“The children’s future is lost,” said Umm Ahmed Abu Awja, surrounded by nine of her young grandchildren. “What they studied last year is completely forgotten. If they return to school, they have to start from the beginning.”


Israel army says top Islamic Jihad commander killed in West Bank

Israel army says top Islamic Jihad commander killed in West Bank
Updated 58 min 4 sec ago
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Israel army says top Islamic Jihad commander killed in West Bank

Israel army says top Islamic Jihad commander killed in West Bank
  • The military said Mohammad Abdullah was “eliminated” on Thursday after Israeli aircraft struck the camp in Tulkarem

Jerusalem: Israel’s army said Friday it had killed Palestinian militant group Islamic Jihad’s top commander for the Nur Shams refugee camp in the occupied West Bank.
The military said Mohammad Abdullah was “eliminated” on Thursday after Israeli aircraft struck the camp in Tulkarem.
An additional “terrorist” was killed in the operation, which recovered M-16 rifles and vests, it added.
Abdullah was the successor of Muhammad Jabber, also known as Abu Shujaa, who was killed in an Israeli strike in late August.
Islamic Jihad is an ally of Hamas, with both groups battling Israeli forces in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip.
Violence has soared in the West Bank since Hamas launched its unprecedented attack on Israel in October last year.
Israeli troops or settlers have killed at least 705 Palestinians in the West Bank since, according to the Ramallah-based health ministry.
Israeli officials say at least 24 Israelis, civilians or members of the security forces, have been killed in attacks carried out by Palestinian militants or in Israeli military operations over the same period in the West Bank.


Senior Hezbollah official survives Israeli assassination attempt, sources say

Senior Hezbollah official survives Israeli assassination attempt, sources say
Updated 11 October 2024
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Senior Hezbollah official survives Israeli assassination attempt, sources say

Senior Hezbollah official survives Israeli assassination attempt, sources say
  • The target, Wafiq Safa, heads Hezbollah’s liaison and coordination unit responsible for working with Lebanese security agencies
  • Safa was the same Hezbollah official who in 2021 warned the judge investigating Beirut’s catastrophic 2020 port explosion against questioning politicians allied with the militia

BEIRUT/JERUSALEM: A senior Hezbollah official eluded an Israeli assassination attempt on Thursday in Beirut, three security sources said, as Israeli strikes there killed 22 people and the UN said its peacekeepers in southern Lebanon were in growing danger.
Wafiq Safa, who heads Hezbollah’s liaison and coordination unit responsible for working with Lebanese security agencies, was targeted by Israel on Thursday night but survived, the security sources said.
Earlier on Thursday, a Lebanese security source told Reuters that Israeli airstrikes on central Beirut targeted at least one senior official in Iran-backed Hezbollah.
The Israeli strikes hit a densely packed residential neighborhood of apartment buildings and small shops in the heart of Beirut. Israel had not previously struck the area, which is removed from Beirut’s southern suburbs where Hezbollah’s headquarters have been repeatedly bombed by Israel.
Israel did not issue evacuation warnings ahead of the strikes on Thursday, which were the deadliest attack on central Beirut since the beginning of the hostilities.
The number of casualties rose quickly, and as midnight approached the Lebanese Health Ministry reported 22 people killed and 117 wounded. Among the dead was a family of eight, including three children, who had evacuated from the south, according to a security source.
Reuters witnesses said at least one strike hit near a gas station and a thick column of smoke was visible. A large fire blazed in the background as rescue workers searched the rubble for survivors, according to video broadcast by Hezbollah’s Al-Manar television.
There was no immediate comment on the incident by Israel.
After Israel killed a series of high-ranking Hezbollah officials in recent weeks, including top leader Hassan Nasrallah, Safa was among the few surviving senior figures as the group’s upper echelons struggled to reorganize.
The attempt to kill Safa, whose role merges security and political affairs, marked a widening of Israel’s targets among Hezbollah officials, which previously focused on the group’s military commanders and top leaders.
Safa, whom Middle East media reports said was born in 1960, oversaw negotiations that led to a 2008 deal in which Hezbollah exchanged the bodies of Israeli soldiers captured in 2006 for Lebanese prisoners in Israel. The 2006 incident triggered a 34-day war with Israel.
Reuters also reported that in 2021 Safa warned the judge investigating Beirut’s catastrophic 2020 port explosion, who sought to question several politicians allied with Hezbollah, that Hezbollah would remove him from the probe.
The Israeli military issued a new evacuation warning on Thursday night for Beirut’s southern suburbs including specific buildings. Earlier in the day, Israel warned Lebanese civilians not to return to homes in the south to avoid harm from fighting.

 


South Sudan floods affect 893,000, over 241,000 displaced: UN

South Sudan floods affect 893,000, over 241,000 displaced: UN
Updated 48 min 28 sec ago
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South Sudan floods affect 893,000, over 241,000 displaced: UN

South Sudan floods affect 893,000, over 241,000 displaced: UN

NAIROBI: Some 893,000 people have been affected by flooding in South Sudan and more than 241,000 displaced, the UN’s humanitarian agency OCHA said Thursday in a grim update on the disaster.

Aid agencies have warned that the world’s youngest country, highly vulnerable to climate change, is facing its worst flooding in decades.

“Flooding continues to affect and displace people across the country,” the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs said in a statement.

“Heavy rainfall and floods have rendered 15 main supply routes impassable, restricting physical access.”

OCHA said about 893,000 people were flood-affected in 42 of South Sudan’s 78 counties as well as the Abyei Administrative Area, a disputed zone claimed by both Juba and Khartoum.

It said Unity and Warrap states in the north of the country accounted for more than 40 percent of the affected population.

More than 241,000 people were displaced in 16 counties and the Abyei area “seeking shelter on higher ground,” OCHA added.

Since gaining independence from Sudan in 2011, the world’s youngest nation has remained plagued by chronic instability, violence and economic stagnation as well as climate disasters such as drought and floods.

The World Bank said in an October 1 update that the latest floods were “worsening an already critical humanitarian situation marked by severe food insecurity, economic decline, continued conflict, disease outbreaks, and the repercussions of the Sudan conflict.”

It said an estimated nine million people, including refugees, will experience “critical needs” in 2024.

The conflict in Sudan has seen more than 797,000 refugees pour into South Sudan as of September, the World Bank said, almost 80 percent of them South Sudanese returnees.

The country also faces another period of political paralysis after the presidency announced yet another extension to a transitional period agreed in a 2018 peace deal, delaying elections due to take place in December by another two years.

Key provisions of the transitional agreement remain unfulfilled — including the creation of a constitution and the unification of the rival forces of President Salva Kiir and his foe Reik Machar.

The delays have left South Sudan’s partners and the United Nations increasingly exasperated.

UN mission chief Nicholas Haysom said on Wednesday there was deep frustration and fatigue among the South Sudanese people.

The international community needed “tangible evidence that this country’s leaders are genuinely committed to a democratic future.”

South Sudan boasts plentiful oil resources, but the vital source of revenue was decimated in February when an export pipeline was damaged in war-torn Sudan.


Civilians flee Gaza’s Jabalia in tightening Israeli siege

Civilians flee Gaza’s Jabalia in tightening Israeli siege
Updated 10 October 2024
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Civilians flee Gaza’s Jabalia in tightening Israeli siege

Civilians flee Gaza’s Jabalia in tightening Israeli siege

GAZA CITY: Civilians fled heavy bombings in northern Gaza on Thursday as Israeli troops advanced on Jabalia refugee camp, leaving many trapped in the line of fire.

“The bombardment has not stopped. Every minute there are shells, rockets and fire on the buildings and everything that moves,” Areej Nasr, 35, told AFP after fleeing from Jabalia camp to Gaza City Thursday.

She said those wounded in strikes could not be rescued.

“No ambulance has arrived, and no one is assisting the wounded. There are dozens lying on the ground,” Nasr said.

The Israeli army, which said it had surrounded Jabalia over the weekend, issued new evacuation orders on Tuesday, telling residents to leave the camp and the entire Jabalia district around it.

Despite a year of strikes and fierce fighting, analysts say Hamas is regrouping.

Gaza’s civil defense agency said they currently cannot currently reach the wounded and dead in Jabalia, saying access is too complicated and dangerous at the moment.

“Many reports reach our teams, but unfortunately, we cannot access them, either because the area is a red zone or because the Israeli occupation is targeting that area,” civil defense spokesman Mahmud Bassal told AFP Thursday.

An AFP photographer in Jabalia Wednesday saw towering piles of rubble where buildings once stood, now littered with fragments of the belongings of former residents.

Several people took turns carrying a woman out of the camp by foot, her injured leg in a makeshift splint made of a broken piece of board salvaged from furniture.

The Israeli army on Thursday said it had “eliminated” more than 50 Palestinian combatants, “including those who fired anti-tank missiles toward the troops,” and “located large quantities of weapons, including AK-47, an RPG, and ammunition.”

Bassal said that at least 140 people have died in Jabalia alone so far during Israel’s latest operation in the camp.

Gaza City also suffered heavy artillery strikes, including on the Rimal neighborhood on Thursday, defense reported.

Bassal said the Rimal Clinic, which houses displaced Palestinians, was struck in a strike, killing at least two and injuring many.

Amjad Aliwa, an emergency physician at nearby Al-Shifa Hospital, once the largest medical complex in Gaza, said that a wave of injured people arrived after the bombing.

“The majority of the injured are children and women, with severe and serious wounds, including burns,” he told AFP, adding that “the number of injured is large, and our resources are limited.”

He said that teams “do not have the most basic medical supplies and necessities,” a reminder of the shortages that have hit the north of Gaza particularly hard since the start of the war.

Humanitarian organizations have complained that the drastic conditions brought about by current military operations have limited their work.

Louise Wateridge, spokeswoman for the UN’s Palestinian refugee agency, UNRWA, said Thursday that “people have nowhere left to go, and the humanitarian space in Gaza continues shrinking.”

She said that between October 8 and 10, “118 attacks have impacted the area, in contrast to a total of 140 incidents recorded there in the entire month of September.”

She added that Jabalia refugee camp bore the brunt of these attacks, with 80.

The war in Gaza was sparked by Hamas’s attack on October 7 last year, which resulted in the deaths of 1,206 people, mostly civilians, according to an AFP tally based on Israeli official figures, which include hostages killed and who died in captivity.

Israel’s retaliatory military offensive has killed 42,065 people in Gaza, most them civilians, according to figures from the Hamas-run territory’s health ministry that the United Nations has described as reliable.


Erdogan says Gaza ‘shame of humanity,’ calls for permanent ceasfire

Erdogan says Gaza ‘shame of humanity,’ calls for permanent ceasfire
Updated 10 October 2024
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Erdogan says Gaza ‘shame of humanity,’ calls for permanent ceasfire

Erdogan says Gaza ‘shame of humanity,’ calls for permanent ceasfire
  • Recep Tayyip Erdogan repeated his claim that Israel’s actions in Gaza constituted ‘genocide’ and called it the ‘shame of humanity’
  • Erdogan branded Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu the ‘butcher of Gaza’ and compared him to Nazi Germany’s Adolf Hitler

TIRANA: Turkiye’s President Recep Tayyip Erdogan renewed his attacks on Israel as he arrived in Tirana Thursday, the first stop of a Balkans tour that will also take him to Serbia.
Repeating his claim that Israel’s actions in Gaza constituted “genocide,” he branded it the “shame of humanity,” at a joint press conference with Albanian Prime Minister Edi Rama.
“The international community, we must do our best to urgently guarantee a permanent ceasefire and exert the necessary pressure on Israel,” he added.
“The genocide that has been going on in Gaza for the past year is the common shame of all humanity,” he added.
The Hamas attack on Israel on October 7, 2023 resulted in the deaths of 1,206 people, most of them civilians, according to an AFP tally based on official Israeli figures.
According to the Hamas-run territory’s health ministry, 42,065 people have been killed in Gaza since the start of the war, mostly civilians. The UN has said the figures are reliable.
Erdogan has branded Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu the “butcher of Gaza” and compared him to Nazi Germany’s Adolf Hitler.
“The aggression led by the Netanyahu government now threatens the world order beyond the region,” Erdogan said.
Later Thursday Erdogan, accompanied by Prime Minister Edi Rama, inaugurated the Great Mosque of Tirana.
The largest Muslim place of worship in the Balkans, it has a capacity of up to 10,000 people. The project, funded by Turkiye, cost 30 million euros.
Turkiye is also a major employer in Albania. As Erdogan said in February, over 600 Turkish companies operate in the country, providing jobs to more than 15,000 workers.
It is also one of the five biggest foreign investors in Albania, he said, with $3.5 billion (3.2 billion euros) committed.
The two NATO member countries also have close military ties, with Turkiye supplying Tirana with its Bayraktar TB2 drones.
For the second stage of his tour Erdogan traveled from Albania to Serbia, where he was greeted at Belgrade airport by Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic.
Turkiye made a diplomatic comeback here in 2017 when Erdogan made a landmark visit to Belgrade.
The five century Ottoman presence in Serbia has traditionally weighed heavily on Belgrade-Ankara relations.
Another source of tension has been Turkiye’s historic ties with Serbia’s former breakaway province of Kosovo. Kosovo declared independence in 2008, a move Belgrade still refuses to recognize.
Erdogan’s 2017 visit repaired the relationship with Serbia, Belgrade analyst Vuk Vuksanovic told AFP.
But Belgrade was furious last year when Turkiye sold drones to Kosovo, something Serbia said was “unacceptable.”
The row could however still be patched up, Vuksanovic insisted.
“I would not be surprised if we see a military deal at the end of this visit,” he said.
He expected talks in Belgrade on Friday to focus on “military cooperation, the position of Turkish companies — and attempts by Belgrade to persuade Ankara to tone down support for Kosovo.”
While the rapprochement is relatively new, economic ties between the two countries are already significant.
Turkish investment in Serbia has rocketed from $1 million to $400 million over the past decade, the Turkiye-Serbia business council told Turkiye’s Anadolu news agency.
Turkish exports to Serbia hit $2.13 billion in 2022, up from $1.14 billion in 2020, according to official Serbian figures.
Turkish tourists are also important for Serbia, second only to visitor numbers from Bosnia.