KHAN YUNIS: Teenagers across the Gaza Strip should have been taking their final exams this month, a last hurdle before university and lifelong dreams, but the war in the Palestinian territory has crushed those hopes.
According to the education ministry in the Gaza Strip, 85 percent of educational facilities in the territory are out of service because of the war.
"I was eagerly awaiting the exams, but the war prevented that and destroyed that joy", said Baraa al-Farra, an 18-year-old student displaced from Khan Yunis in southern Gaza.
"At first we were waiting in the hope that the war would end and we would catch up," he said.
But "we don't know how long it will last or how many years it will deprive us of our educational lives."
Almost nine months of war in Gaza began with an unprecedented October 7 attack on southern Israel by the Palestinian groups. The attack resulted in the deaths of 1,194 people, based on Israeli official figures. Israel's retaliatory offensive has killed at least 37,598 people, mostly civilians, according to the health ministry in Gaza.
The Education Cluster, a UN-backed organisation, estimated in a report this month that more than 75 percent of Gaza's schools would need full reconstruction or major rehabilitation to reopen.
Many have been turned into shelters for Gaza's displaced and others have been damaged in bombardment.
Liliane Nihad, an 18-year-old displaced to Khan Yunis from Gaza City, in the territory's north, said she and her fellow students had "been waiting 12 years to take these exams and pass and feel happy and enter university... but we have been deprived of all that by this damned war".
Nihad said she had been hoping to study English and to get a doctorate, "but all of that has evaporated".
Displaying their anger at the situation, dozens of students and teachers held a protest in Gaza City's Al-Rimal neighbourhood on Saturday.
The UN, citing the Palestinian ministry of education, said about 39,000 high school students in Gaza are unable to take their tests. — AFP
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