In Gaza, the airstrikes no longer target only residential buildings and hospitals, education itself has become a direct target of annihilation. Since October 7, children and teachers have paid a bloody price in a brutal campaign that seeks to erase the Palestinian future at its roots.
On Tuesday, the Palestinian Ministry of Education announced that 18,489 students have been killed and 28,854 injured to varying degrees since the start of the genocide in Gaza, figures that reveal the devastating scale of this humanitarian and legal catastrophe.
In the Gaza Strip: Over 18,346 students killed and approximately 27,884 injured.
In the West Bank: 143 students killed, 970 injured, and 740 arrested during ongoing military raids.
Teachers have also not been spared: 970 educators and administrative staff have been killed, 4,533 injured, and more than 199 education personnel arrested in the West Bank.
Educational Infrastructure in Ruins:
- 160 government schools completely destroyed.
- 63 university buildings erased from the map.
- 118 government schools and 93 UNRWA schools damaged or bombed.
- 25 schools obliterated entirely, students and teachers alike.
In the West Bank, 152 schools have sustained damage, and 8 universities and colleges have been repeatedly raided, disrupting education and forcing most institutions into online learning.
This is not collateral damage. This is a deliberate and systematic assault on a fundamental human right: the right to education. The organised killing of students and educators, and the decimation of schools and universities, constitutes a calculated attempt to annihilate the present and future of Palestine.
International humanitarian law explicitly prohibits the targeting of educational institutions or using them for military purposes. Yet the occupation has turned classrooms into rubble and students into casualties. This recurring pattern of violations reflects a deliberate policy of erasure, one that aligns with the broader genocidal campaign being waged against the Palestinian people.
What is unfolding in Gaza and the West Bank is not a passing conflict; it is an attempt to uproot an entire generation from classrooms and cast them into the grave. As bombs rain down on schoolbooks and blackboards, a new chapter of an ongoing crime is being written, one that seeks to kill both knowledge and hope.
