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.”


Delayed Gaza polio vaccinations to resume on Saturday, agencies say

Delayed Gaza polio vaccinations to resume on Saturday, agencies say
Updated 13 sec ago
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Delayed Gaza polio vaccinations to resume on Saturday, agencies say

Delayed Gaza polio vaccinations to resume on Saturday, agencies say
  • The final phase of the campaign had aimed to reach an estimated 119,000 children under 10 years old

GAZA: The third phase of a delayed polio vaccination campaign in Gaza will begin on Saturday, aid organizations said on Friday, after the rollout was derailed by Israeli bombardments, mass displacement and lack of access.
The polio campaign began on Sept. 1 after the World Health Organization (WHO) confirmed in August that a baby was partially paralyzed by the type 2 polio virus, the first such case in the territory in 25 years.
The humanitarian pause to conduct the campaign had been agreed but WHO and the UN children’s agency UNICEF said the area covered by the agreement had been substantially reduced from the previous pause in September, and would now cover only Gaza City.
The final phase of the campaign had aimed to reach an estimated 119,000 children under 10 years old in northern Gaza with a second dose of novel oral polio vaccine type 2 (nOPV2). However, achieving this target is now unlikely due to access constraints, the statement said.
COGAT, the Israeli army’s Palestinian civilian affairs agency, said it was helping to coordinate the three-day campaign and once it was complete, there would be an assessment to decide whether the schedule would be extended.
“This coordination will ensure that the population can safely reach medical centers where the vaccines will be administered,” it said in a statement.


Macron recognizes French soldiers killed Algerian independence hero in 1957

Macron recognizes French soldiers killed Algerian independence hero in 1957
Updated 01 November 2024
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Macron recognizes French soldiers killed Algerian independence hero in 1957

Macron recognizes French soldiers killed Algerian independence hero in 1957
  • France’s century-long colonization of Algeria and viciously fought 1954-62 war of independence left deep scars on both sides

PARIS: President Emmanuel Macron on Friday acknowledged that Larbi Ben M’hidi, a key figure in Algeria’s War of Independence against France, had been killed by French soldiers after his arrest in 1957, the French presidency said.
“He recognized today that Larbi Ben M’hidi, a national hero for Algeria... was killed by French soldiers,” the presidency said on the 70th anniversary of the revolt that sparked the war, in a new gesture of reconciliation by Macron toward the former colony.
France’s more than a century-long colonization of Algeria and the viciously fought 1954-62 war of independence have left deep scars on both sides.
In recent years, Macron has made several gestures toward reconciliation while stopping short of issuing any apology for French imperialism.
Since coming to power in 2017, Macron has sought “to look at the history of colonization and the Algerian War in the face, with the aim of creating a peaceful and shared memory,” the presidency said.
Ben M’hidi was one of six founding members of the National Liberation Front (FLN) that launched the armed revolt against French rule that led to the war.
The presidency said that according to the official version, Ben M’hidi after his arrest in February 1957 attempted to commit suicide and died during his transfer to the hospital.
But it said he had in fact been killed by soldiers under the command of General Paul Aussaresses, who admitted to this at the beginning of the 2000s.
In 2017, then-presidential candidate Macron dubbed the French occupation a “crime against humanity.”
A report he commissioned from historian Benjamin Stora recommended in 2020 further moves to reconcile the two countries, while ruling out “repentance” and “apologies.”
But Macron, who has sought to build a strong relationship with Algerian President Abdelmadjid Tebboune, in 2022 questioned whether Algeria existed as a nation before being colonized by France, drawing an angry response from Algiers.


Israel cabinet approves 2025 wartime budget

Israel cabinet approves 2025 wartime budget
Updated 01 November 2024
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Israel cabinet approves 2025 wartime budget

Israel cabinet approves 2025 wartime budget
  • Israel has been locked in a war with Hamas in Gaza, and since September it has been fighting the Lebanese group Hezbollah

JERUSALEM: Israel’s cabinet on Friday approved a 2025 national budget, a wartime financial package that far-right Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich said supported the country’s ongoing wars and encouraged economic growth.
For more than a year, Israel has been locked in a war with Hamas in Gaza, and since September it has been fighting the Lebanese group Hezbollah in Lebanon.
“The main objective of the 2025 budget is to maintain the security of the state and achieve victory on all fronts, while safeguarding the resilience of the Israeli economy,” Smotrich said.
The budget, totalling about 607.4 billion shekels ($162 billion), includes a nine billion shekel package to support reserve soldiers.
It will now move to the Knesset, or parliament, where Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s coalition holds a majority, making approval likely.
Netanyahu welcomed the cabinet’s approval of the budget, saying Smotrich had put together “an important, difficult but necessary budget in a year of war.”
Additional allocations would be made for the defense ministry, as the military fights the two wars, as well as Iran and the groups it backs.
“This budget will help and support the needs of the war so that it will lead to a victory that will allow the strong Israeli economy to grow and prosper for many years,” Smotrich said.
The budget projects a fiscal deficit of about 4.3 percent.
But former prime minister and key opposition leader Yair Lapid criticized the budget, saying it would “increase the expenditure of every family in Israel by 20,000 shekels per year.”


UK urged to evacuate hospitalized children from Gaza

UK urged to evacuate hospitalized children from Gaza
Updated 01 November 2024
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UK urged to evacuate hospitalized children from Gaza

UK urged to evacuate hospitalized children from Gaza
  • British charity Project Pure Hope: ‘We are witnessing a humanitarian disaster of historic proportions’
  • Kamal Aswan Hospital has just 2 doctors to look after more than 150 patients

LONDON: A British charity has urged the UK government to evacuate 21 critically ill children currently in a hospital in northern Gaza, Sky News reported.

The Kamal Adwan Hospital is besieged by Israeli forces and was recently raided by troops, who detained staff and left the facility with only two doctors to care for more than 150 patients.

It was also targeted by an Israeli airstrike on Thursday. Its supplies are reportedly running low and many of its facilities are no longer operational.

Project Pure Hope has called on the UK to facilitate the evacuation of vulnerable children trapped inside.

“We are witnessing a humanitarian disaster of historic proportions,” it said in a statement. “With each passing hour, the children’s chance of survival diminishes without advanced medical intervention — intervention that cannot be provided under the hospital’s current, catastrophic conditions.”

The charity said it has sufficient money to fund an evacuation of 21 children in critical condition at the hospital.

It added that it held a meeting with UK Foreign Office staff this week to discuss its plans, but so far the government has not agreed to take in patients.

“While other countries ... have opened their doors to these paediatric cases, the UK remains a notable outlier, having yet to implement any such programme,” the charity said.

The US, Switzerland, Italy Ireland and the UAE have taken in hospitalized children from Gaza since the start of the conflict over a year ago.

Fears for the safety of people in the area around the hospital have grown in recent weeks amid an uptick in Israeli military activity and Israel’s refusal to allow sufficient aid to reach displaced civilians.

Charities have warned of famine and disease, and aid workers struggle to move around Gaza, especially to the scene of military strikes to help civilian casualties.

Project Pure Hope’s concerns about the fate of patients at Kamal Adwan Hospital have been echoed by medical charity Medecins Sans Frontieres, which said it is “deeply concerned” by the situation after one of its staff members was detained by Israeli forces.

Israel claims that Hamas has been using the hospital, located in the Jabaliya refugee camp, as a base, and that it has found weapons stored at the facility. The hospital denies the allegation.


WHO ‘deeply concerned’ about ‘rising attacks’ on Lebanon health care

WHO ‘deeply concerned’ about ‘rising attacks’ on Lebanon health care
Updated 01 November 2024
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WHO ‘deeply concerned’ about ‘rising attacks’ on Lebanon health care

WHO ‘deeply concerned’ about ‘rising attacks’ on Lebanon health care
  • ‘… We are again and again and again emphasizing that health care is not a target; health workers are not a target’

GENEVA: The World Health Organization said Friday it is deeply concerned about Israeli attacks hitting health care workers and facilities in Lebanon, in its war against Hezbollah.
“We are really, really concerned, deeply concerned, about the rising attacks on health workers and the facilities in Lebanon, and we are again and again and again emphasizing that health care is not a target; health workers are not a target,” WHO spokeswoman Margaret Harris told a media briefing in Geneva.