Tasneem Safi, 29, spends long hours with her five-year old daughter Layan, striving to teach her some of the basics of the Arabic language and mathematics, and repeating to her some of the lessons that she was receiving in kindergarten until just two days before the outbreak of the Israeli war on the Gaza Strip on Oct. 7.
The war broke out only three weeks after the start of the new school year in the Palestinian territories.
Safi is one of thousands of mothers who are trying to make up for the educational gap incurred by their children in the current school year, if they were “lucky” enough to move to a safer place.
“I teach her letters, numbers, words, and simple mathematical problems. Her school journey cannot begin late,” Safi told Asharq Al-Awsat.
But the circumstances imposed by the war on Gaza do not make even these attempts successful.
Safi faces many life problems like other residents of the Gaza Strip, with interruptions in electricity, water, and food supplies, and living under bombardment, killing, and destruction.
She says her daughter always asks her where she will study after Israel destroyed the kindergarten she used to attend in the Al-Nasr neighborhood in the northern Gaza Strip, and enquires about her friends as well.
“Children grow up prematurely. They think about difficult and complex things, not ABC. I feel like they are lost. I don’t know when or how they will return to education,” she remarked.
During the current war on the Gaza Strip, Israel bombed universities, schools, and kindergartens of all kinds, whether they were private or belonged to the government or to UNRWA, as part of a strategy that many residents saw as also aiming to deprive an entire generation of education.
UN experts said that the ongoing harsh attacks on educational infrastructure in the Gaza Strip have a devastating, long-term impact on the population’s basic rights to learn and express themselves, depriving another generation of Palestinians of their future.
Since the outbreak of the war, at least 625,000 students were forced to abandon the academic year, while Israel killed more than 5,479 students, 261 teachers, and 95 university professors, and injured more than 7,819 students and 756 teachers.
According to international and local statistics, 80 percent of schools in Gaza were destroyed, which indicates a deliberate attempt to comprehensively destroy the Palestinian education system, an act described as “educational genocide” by international experts.
The term refers to the systematic erasure of education through the arrest, detention, or killing of teachers, students, and staff, and the destruction of educational infrastructure.
Reham Hamid, the mother of Rami, who was studying in an UNRWA school in Al-Shati refugee camp, west of Gaza City, said that she was forced to send her 9 year-old son to a tent inside a school housing the displaced, in order for him to attend classes.
Despite initiatives to open educational classes in tents, the process did not go as it should, due to the lack of human resources, tools and space, according to Hamid.
While the Ministry of Education, whether in the Gaza Strip or the West Bank, did not issue any comment on the fate of the academic year in the Strip, thousands of high school students are still waiting for any glimmer of hope in order not to lose an entire year.
Student Ramadan Makkawi said that he was feeling lost.
“We spent the most important stage in any student’s life displaced and under bombing. We think about survival, homes, family, and food instead of universities. A difficult situation to describe,” he said.
He continued: “It is clear that there is no solution. We will pay the price with our lives.”

The ongoing clashes in South Lebanon have disrupted the school year, as many students have fled the region with their families, while others are besieged in the towns and unable to have a safe access to the classrooms.

The Lebanese Ministry of Education has resorted to temporary solutions, including providing students with the necessary tools for online learning and housing the displaced in safe areas, that is, within schools designated to accommodate them and help them complete their educational programs with the available means.

According to the ministry’s data, around 11,000 students have forcibly left their schools this year.

Director of the ministry’s Secondary Education Department Khaled Al-Fayed said that the concerned authorities were “dealing with a difficult reality that has imposed itself on students.”

He added that efforts were deployed to limit the resulting damage as much as possible.

In remarks to Asharq Al-Awsat, Al-Fayed said that 44 schools, including 12 secondary schools, have been permanently closed in the villages witnessing military confrontations.

He added: “There are 10,800 students who are out of school, including 1,951 in secondary education.”

He noted that these educational institutions are located in the towns of Alma al-Shaab, Marwahin, Marjayoun, Mays al-Jabal, Rmeish, Aita al-Shaab, Taybeh, Aitaroun, Shebaa, al-Khiam, Bint Jbeil and Kfarshuba.

What further complicated the situation was that the battles erupted in the South only one day before the beginning of the academic year on Oct. 8.

The students and their teachers were unable to find alternative solutions, which stirred a state of general confusion.

With the intensification of the Israeli bombing that destroyed hundreds of homes and facilities and forced the residents to flee their towns, the authorities scrambled to find temporary ways to address the crisis.

According to Al-Fayed, the ministry established 10 response centers for academic education students and 10 other centers for vocational education, distributed among areas of displacement in Beirut, Mount Lebanon, and the Bekaa, in addition to a small number of buildings in the cities of Sidon and Tyre.

Despite the difficulty to reach the students who are still trapped in their villages, the Ministry of Education was able to provide them with computers to facilitate distance learning.

The ministry official pointed to the distribution of 3,200 laptops and about 3,000 tablets to students and teachers in the South. As for private schools, he said that around 20 institutions have been closed permanently, while others enjoy a kind of independence and resort to online education through applications varying from WhatsApp to Zoom.

Students in border villages are facing another problem, which is the official baccalaureate exams, as the war is likely to continue until after June, during which the examinations take place.

In a recent announcement, Minister of Education Abbas Al-Halabi decided to conduct the official exams across the country, including the South, without specifying the mechanism by which students in the border villages would be able to sit for them.

Israeli officials have voiced concerns over Egypt’s probable withdrawal from a hostage deal mediation efforts in the Gaza Strip amid troubled ties between the two countries, Israeli Haaretz reported on Wednesday.
Relations tensed out between Egypt and Israel after the latter’s seizure of the Palestinian side of the Rafah border crossing and its refusal to let humanitarian aid into Gaza.
According to the newspaper, Israeli officials expressed concern that cooperation at the military and intelligence levels with Egypt could dwindle unless the issue gets resolved.
The daily added that Israeli officials have also voiced concern that relations with Egypt could further deteriorate if the fighting in Gaza prolongs on, and if ceasefire talks fail between Israel and the Palestinian Hamas group.
Israeli Foreign Minister Israel Katz had on Tuesday accused Egypt of closing the Rafah crossing.
He said that Egypt must be "persuaded" to reopen the Rafah border crossing to "allow the continued delivery of international humanitarian aid" into Gaza.
His comment prompted an angry response from Egypt's Foreign Minister Sameh Shoukry, who said in a statement that Israel's seizure of the Rafah crossing and its military operations in the area were the main obstacles to aid entering Gaza.
Israel launched its Gaza operation after an attack on Oct. 7 by Hamas-led gunmen who killed some 1,200 people and took more than 250 hostages.

The Palestinian death toll in the war has now surpassed 35,000, according to Gaza health officials, whose figures do not differentiate between civilians and fighters.

Tens of thousands of civilians fled the southern Gaza city of Rafah ahead of a threatened Israeli ground offensive, as Palestinians on Wednesday mark the anniversary of their "Nakba" or "catastrophe" of 1948.

During the war that accompanied Israel's creation, around 760,000 Palestinians fled or were driven from their homes and many took refuge in what would later become the Gaza Strip and the West Bank.

Wednesday's commemoration of the "Nakba" comes as multiple battles between Israeli troops and Hamas fighters across the Gaza Strip force waves of Palestinian mass displacement.

Nearly 450,000 Palestinians have been displaced from Rafah since May 6, and around 100,000 from northern Gaza, UN agencies said.

That means around a quarter of Gaza's population of 2.4 million people have been displaced again in about one week.

UN chief Antonio Guterres repeated his call for a humanitarian ceasefire to allow more aid into the besieged territory.

"I reiterate my appeal for an immediate humanitarian ceasefire in Gaza and for the release of all hostages. I call for the Rafah crossing to be re-opened immediately and for the unimpeded humanitarian access throughout Gaza," he posted Tuesday on social media site X.

The war and siege have triggered a humanitarian crisis in Gaza, with the UN repeatedly lamenting aid restrictions as famine stalks the north.

Since Israeli troops moved into eastern Rafah, the aid crossing point from Egypt has remained closed and the nearby Kerem Shalom crossing lacks "safe and logistically viable access", a UN report said late Monday.

Qatar, which has been mediating peace talks, said Gazans "have not received any aid" since May 9.

- Attack on aid convoy -

Israeli police on Tuesday said they had opened an investigation after right-wing activists stopped and ransacked at least seven Gaza-bound aid trucks coming from Jordan, leaving food spilt on the road.

One of the activists, Hana Giat, said that with hostages still held by Hamas, "no humanitarian aid should go in before our hostages are out, safe in their homes".

Both the United States, which called it "a total outrage", and Britain, said they would raise concerns about the incident with Israel's government.

EU foreign policy chief Josep Borrell called on Israeli authorities to stop the attacks and hold those responsible to account.

"I'm outraged by the repeated & still unchecked attacks perpetrated by Israeli extremists on aid convoys on their way to Gaza, including from Jordan. Hundreds of thousands of civilians are starving," Borrell posted on X late Tuesday.

The bloodiest-ever Gaza war erupted after Hamas's October 7 attack on Israel, which killed more than 1,170 people, mostly civilians, according to an AFP tally of Israeli official figures.

Gunmen also seized about 250 hostages, 128 of whom Israel estimates remain in Gaza, including 36 the military says are dead.

Israel's relentless bombardment and ground offensive in Gaza have since killed at least 35,173 people, mostly civilians, according to the Gaza health ministry.

Clashes have rocked densely crowded Rafah but also flared again in northern and central Gaza months after troops and tanks first entered those areas.

At least five people were killed, including a woman and her child, and several others wounded, in two Israeli air strikes on Gaza City on Tuesday night, according to Gaza's civil defense agency.

Israel last week defied a chorus of warnings -- including from top ally Washington which paused a shipment of bombs -- and sent troops and tanks into the east of Rafah to pursue militants.

- 'No clarity on how to stop war' -

Battles and heavy Israeli bombardments have been reported around Rafah as well as in Gaza City and Jabalia refugee camp in the north, and Nuseirat camp in the center.

At Gaza City's Al-Ahli hospital, the wounded and the dead arrived.

A shirtless man, his chest smeared with blood, lay on a hard cot hooked up to a monitor. Outside, several men carried a shrouded corpse and placed it in the shade of a tree blooming red flowers.

Despite threatening to withhold some arms over concerns of a Rafah assault, US President Joe Biden's administration informed Congress on Tuesday of a $1 billion weapons package for Israel, official sources told AFP.

US State Department spokesman Vedant Patel earlier Tuesday said that while Washington backed military pressure on Hamas, it was not the only way to "fully defeat" the militants.

Patel reiterated Washington's position that, without a political plan for Gaza's future, militants "will keep coming back and Israel will continue to remain under threat", leading to "this continued cycle of violence".

Momentum had been building in truce negotiations, mediator Qatar's prime minister said on Tuesday, but "what happened with Rafah has set us backward".

Prime Minister Sheikh Mohammed bin Abdulrahman Al-Thani said that "right now we are on a status of almost a stalemate".

Egypt and the United States have also been mediating.

"There is no clarity how to stop the war from the Israeli side. I don't think that they are considering this as an option," Sheikh Mohammed said.

On the eve of the "Nakba" commemoration, thousands of people took part in an annual march that took them through the ruins of villages that Palestinians were expelled from during the 1948 war that led to Israel's creation.

Eyes glistening with tears, Abdul Rahman al-Sabah, 88, recalled how members of the Haganah, a Zionist paramilitary group, forced his family from al-Kassayer and "blew up our village".

The United Nations has launched an investigation into an unidentified strike on a UN car in Rafah on Monday that killed its first international staff in Gaza since Oct. 7, a spokesperson for the UN Secretary General said. 

The staffer, a retired Indian Army officer named Waibhav Anil Kale, was working with the UN Department of Safety and Security and was on route to the European Hospital in Rafah along with a colleague, who was also injured in the attack. 

On Wednesday, India's foreign ministry said its diplomatic missions were "in touch with relevant authorities" on the investigation, and helping to bring home the remains. 

Israel has been moving deeper into Rafah in southern Gaza, where more than a million people had sought shelter, and its forces pounded the enclave's north on Tuesday in some of the fiercest attacks in months. 

Israel's international allies and aid groups have repeatedly warned against a ground incursion into Rafah, where many Palestinians fled, and Israel says four Hamas battalions are holed up. Israel says it must root out the remaining fighters. 

In a statement on Monday after Kale's death, UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres reiterated an "urgent appeal for an immediate humanitarian ceasefire and for the release of all hostages," saying the conflict in Gaza was continuing to take a heavy toll "not only on civilians, but also on humanitarian workers". 

Palestinian health authorities say Israel's ground and air campaign in Gaza since Oct. 7 has killed more than 35,000 people and driven most of the enclave's 2.3 million people from their homes. 

On Tuesday, the UN Secretary General's deputy spokesperson, Farhan Haq, said the UN had set up a fact-finding panel to determine the responsibility for the attack. 

"It’s very early in the investigation, and details of the incident are still being verified with the Israeli Defense Force," he said. 

There are 71 international UN staff members in Gaza currently, he said. 

Israel, which launched its Gaza operation after an attack on Oct. 7 by Hamas-led gunmen who killed some 1,200 people and took more than 250 hostages, according to its tallies, has ordered civilians to evacuate parts of Rafah. 

The main United Nations aid agency in Gaza, UNRWA estimates some 450,000 people have fled the city since May 6. More than a million civilians had sought refuge there. 

The Iraqi Migration Ministry rejected on Tuesday a Human Rights Watch report that warned against violating the rights of displaced residents from the Sinjar district if authorities plan the closure of camps in the Iraqi Kurdistan Region by next July 30.

Despite the liberation of the region from ISIS nine years ago, many Sinjar residents still live in displacement camps in Kurdistan or in diaspora countries.

On Tuesday, spokesperson of the Migration Ministry Ali Abbas Jahangir told Asharq Al-Awsat the HRW report “may be inaccurate” because the Iraqi government has linked its decision to close IDP camps in Kurdistan to three basic options that are based on international standards.

Three options

Listing the three options, Jahangir said the IDPs could either return to Sinjar, relocate to other cities under federal control, or remain in the Kurdistan Region but outside the camps.

There are 23 camps in Iraq, mostly located across Kurdistan. The camps currently host about 30,000 families or more than 150,000 people, including 25,000 families from Sinjar, according to the spokesperson.

Jahangir said the Ministry’s role is to implement the decisions of the Iraqi government, and therefore, is not concerned with ensuring services and infrastructure in the areas where the displaced people should return.

He added: “We have more than 22,000 families returning to Sinjar and we have more than 5,000 applications for return submitted.”

Jahangir said the Ministry announced a package of aid and incentives for returnees, including a one-time payment of 4 million Iraqi dinars (about $2,600) per family, social security benefits, and interest-free small business loans.

The HRW had warned on Monday that the planned closure of displaced people’s camps in Kurdistan by a July 30 deadline will imperil the rights of many camp residents from Sinjar.

Sinjar remains unsafe and lacks adequate social services to ensure the economic, social, and cultural rights of thousands of displaced people who may soon be forced to return, the organization said.

Security and political sources agree that Iraq has not been able to extend its full authority in Sinjar. They said the security of the province is still run by a group of official forces, in addition to Arab and Kurdish armed factions, including the Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK).

Voluntary return

Sarah Sanbar, Iraq researcher at Human Rights Watch, said: “Many Sinjaris have been living in camps since 2014 and they deserve to be able to go home, but returns need to be safe and voluntary.”

She warned that given the lack of services, infrastructure, and safety in the district, the government risks making an already bad situation worse.

“Nobody wants to live in an IDP camp forever, but closing these camps when home isn’t safe is not a sustainable solution to displacement,” Sanbar said.

Although the HRW report noted the package of aid and incentives offered by the Iraqi government to encourage returnees, it found in a 2023 report that the main barriers to Sinjaris’ return were the government’s failure to provide compensation for the loss of their property and livelihoods, delayed reconstruction, an unstable security situation, and lack of justice and accountability for crimes and abuses against them.

The Permanent Representative of Palestine to the League of Arab States said that leaders at the Arab Summit in Bahrain on Thursday will call for an international peace conference to resolve the Palestinian cause, under the auspices of the United Nations.

Ambassador Muhannad Al-Aklouk revealed that the Bahraini Minister of Foreign Affairs confirmed, during his speech at the meeting of Arab foreign ministers, that the summit will adopt a set of Arab initiatives, including “holding an international peace conference to resolve the Palestinian issue, under the auspices of (the United Nations), on the territory of Bahrain.”

Al-Aklouk added that Palestine welcomes and supports the initiative, and considers it a response to the peace plan previously presented by Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas in 2018.

In press statements on the sidelines of the meeting of Arab foreign ministers in Manama, on Tuesday, the permanent representative of Palestine to the Arab League said that the conference aims to launch a serious political process with a specific time limit, leading to ending the occupation on the basis of international references for the peace process, including the 2002 Arab Peace Initiative.

“The Bahrain summit is expected to adopt the term genocide to describe the Israeli aggression on the Gaza Strip, which claimed thousands of lives and caused the destruction of infrastructure,” he remarked.

Al-Aklouk went on to say that other measures are expected to be announced during the summit, including “calling on the Security Council to adopt a resolution under Chapter Seven of the (United Nations) Charter to oblige Israel to commit to a ceasefire,” stressing that Chapter Seven “includes imposing sanctions if the decisions are not implemented.”

“The Arab Summit is scheduled to consider the invasion of the city of Rafah as an attack on Arab national security,” he stated, pointing to the threats to Egypt’s security.

US Secretary of Defense Lloyd J. Austin reiterated to his Egyptian counterpart the US commitment to the Middle East and Egyptian security in the face of regional threats.
A statement released by the US Department of Defense on Tuesday said that Austin “spoke with Egypt's Minister of Defense, General Mohamed Zaki, today to discuss regional challenges and our deep bilateral security cooperation".
“Secretary Austin reiterated US commitment to the Middle East and Egyptian security in the face of regional threats and expressed appreciation for Egypt's leadership in preventing the spread of the current conflict and in providing humanitarian assistance to the people of Gaza", added the statement.

UNICEF Regional Director for the Middle East and North Africa Adele Khodr said in a statement on Tuesday that Gaza border crossings must be swiftly opened, and humanitarian organizations allowed to safely move and provide critical life-saving assistance upon which all children in Gaza depend.

"Failure to do so will lead to a tragedy even greater than what we have already witnessed – an outcome we must urgently work to avoid," she stressed.

“After over seven months of conflict, with tens of thousands of lives lost and countless appeals for ceasefire, the violence persists. It is crucial that weapons go silent and children’s rights are respected. The children of Gaza, who have endured unimaginable horrors, deserve an immediate ceasefire and a chance for a peaceful future."

She also said that the escalation of hostilities in Rafah and throughout the Gaza Strip has deepened the suffering of hundreds of thousands of children, who have endured an unrelenting nightmare for the past 218 days.

"We cannot accept their plight being live streamed as collateral damage in a conflict they never chose."

“Last week, a long-feared military operation began in Rafah, displacing over 448,000 people to unsafe areas like Al-Mawasi and Deir al Balah. Meanwhile, heavy bombardment and ground operations have spread to northern Gaza, leaving a trail of destruction in areas such as Jabaliya refugee camp and Beit Lahia. At least 64,000 people there have been forced to flee their devastated homes."

Khodr affirmed that since the start of the most recent escalation, UNICEF has been facing increased challenges to transport any assistance into the Gaza Strip.

“I’m also very concerned about water infrastructure and access to clean water and sanitation across Gaza. In the north, vital wells have suffered great damage, while in Rafah at least eight facilities are down, impacting around 300,000 people, many of them children who will likely revert to contaminated water and become seriously ill. When water fails, children suffer the most"

Israel's army said rockets fired from Lebanon on Tuesday killed a civilian and wounded five soldiers on the Israeli side of the border.

"On the northern border, a civilian was killed today from an anti-tank missile that hit Adamit," a kibbutz community on the border with Lebanon, army spokesman Daniel Hagari said in a televised briefing.

The army said in a statement that "several anti-tank missile launches were identified from Lebanon", and that one soldier was moderately wounded and four others were lightly hurt, AFP reported.

According to media reports, the person killed was a man who had been visiting the village.

Hagari meanwhile said "during the day, we've attacked dozens of Hezbollah targets in southern Lebanon".

Israel and Hamas-ally Hezbollah have exchanged near-daily fire following the Palestinian group's October 7 attack on southern Israel that sparked war in Gaza.

On Monday, Israel's army said missiles fired from Lebanon had wounded four Israeli soldiers.