English teacher Tariq Al-Annabi holds a class in an outdoor UN-run school in Rafah, Gaza Strip, on Nov. 26, 2023, during a temporary ceasefire. (AP)
Rafah, March 1 (RHC)-- Nearly five months into Israel's devastating onslaught on Gaza amid a muted response from the self proclaimed supporters of peace and human rights, Israel has launched a massive ethnic cleansing campaign in Gaza while rendering the Palestinian territory uninhabitable.
So far more than 30,000 people, most of them women and children, have been killed, and over 69,000 others injured in the Israeli strikes on the besieged coastal territory. Nearly 2 million people have also been displaced in Gaza as a result of the Israeli onslaught.
The Israeli regime has destroyed hundreds of schools, including those run by the UN in the besieged Palestinian enclave. According to the speaker for UNICEF, Jonathan Couric, there is absolutely no form of education or schooling in the Gaza strip at the moment.
There were approximately 625,000 school aged children in the Gaza Strip. None of them are attending schools now. The level of violence and the ongoing hostilities and the intense bombing currently taking place doesn't allow for education.
According to Palestinian education officials, at least 280 government schools and 65 UNRWA run schools have been destroyed or damaged. Nearly 240 teachers have also lost their lives in Israeli strikes on Gaza. Also, more than 4850 students have been killed, and over 8200 others have been injured as of February 6th.
Al-Shaima Akram Saidam was one of these students, a teenager who graduated from high school as the top ranking Palestinian student of 2023 with a 99.6% grade point average. Two months before the Israeli onslaught on Gaza Saidam's home was filled with drums and loud ululation of women celebrating her achievement.
Shaima had decided to study English translation of the Islamic University of Gaza before she was brutally killed, along with several members of her family in an Israeli airstrikes targeting a refugee camp in Gaza in October.
More than 80 percent of the 2.3 million people of Gaza have also been displaced, most of them several times over, UNRWA said. Since October 2023, more than 625,000 students and 22,500 teachers in Gaza have been denied access to schools due to the Israeli attacks.
