Gaza students return to makeshift schools after three years of genocide
Nada Nabil reports in Middle East Eye on 23 September 2026:
After three years of Israeli genocide deprived him of a formal education, 13-year-old Akram Helles is finally back in the classroom. The Palestinian boy sits on a thin mattress alongside his seventh-grade classmates inside a white makeshift tent on their first day of the 2026 school year. A large whiteboard stands at the front of the tent. Beside it is a single chair for their teacher at Gaza Municipality Preparatory School, set up in the Katiba area of the southern Rimal neighbourhood in western Gaza City.
The heat inside the tent is intense. The students sit on the bare ground. Yet Helles is excited to be back. “We still cannot believe that Akram has finally been able to join a real school after everything we have been through,” his father, 38-year-old Mohammad Helles, told Middle East Eye. “During the war, Akram and his siblings were out of education for long periods. It was not easy for them to keep up with online learning or enrol in private schools,” he added.
According to the United Nations International Children’s Emergency Fund (UNICEF), around 700,000 students have missed out on formal education since the genocide began in 2023.
On Sunday, around 500,000 students returned to education across Gaza for the first time since then – 350,000 in public schools and 150,000 in schools run by UNRWA, the United Nations agency for Palestinian refugees.
But the schools they return to bear little resemblance to those they knew before the war. Around 98 percent of schools in the Gaza Strip have been damaged by the Israeli army, including around 80 percent directly hit, according to UNICEF. Many of the remaining buildings have been turned into shelters for displaced Palestinians, making regular schooling impossible.
Working with partners including UNICEF and UNRWA, the Ministry of Education has set up a limited number of classrooms in shelters and plastic-sheet tents, many of which lack desks, chairs and basic services.
Even under these makeshift conditions, not every student has been able to enrol. “We went through a lot before we were finally able to enrol Akram and his siblings at an educational point near the camp where we live,” Helles said. “We tried to enrol our children somewhere close because we are afraid of sudden bombardments and want to be near them. They also cannot travel to distant areas because transport is unavailable or too expensive.”