When school becomes home: Palestinian teachers describe teaching in a warzone

 At least 219 schools and nine universities have been bombed in Israeli air raids in the Gaza Strip in the last month; strikes that have killed 130 teachers.

Many of the schools still standing have suffered structural damage and are at constant risk of attack but are serving as refuge centres for thousands of displaced Palestinians.

“I feel like I’m in a nightmare, that this isn’t reality. How did I come to live in a school, in a classroom, where I used to love coming every morning to teach my students and have a good time?” asked teacher Umm Osama Tabsh who has been living in the school where she used to teach before the war began.

“I’ve been here day and night for 31 days now. I live here because it’s not only a shelter for displaced people in Gaza, it is also because I lost many of my students. I was teaching them, but the Israeli attacks killed them,” she continued. 

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