The new school year in the Palestinian territories
officially began on Monday, with all schools in Gaza shut after 11 months of
war and no sign of a ceasefire.
As fighting continued, Israel announced new orders to
residents of the north Gaza Strip to leave their homes, in response to rockets
fired into Israel.
Umm Zaki's son Moataz, 15, was supposed to begin 10th
grade. Instead he woke up in their tent in Deir al-Balah in central Gaza and
was sent to fetch a container of water from more than a kilometre away.
"Usually, such a day would be a day of
celebration, seeing the children in the new uniform, going to school, and
dreaming of becoming doctors and engineers. Today all we hope is that the war
ends before we lose any of them," the mother of five told Reuters by text
message.
The Palestinian Education Ministry said all Gaza
schools were shut and 90% of them had been destroyed or damaged in Israel's
assault on the territory, launched after Hamas gunmen attacked Israeli towns in
October last year.
The U.N. Palestinian aid agency UNRWA, which runs
around half of Gaza's schools, has turned as many of them as it can into
emergency shelters housing thousands of displaced families.
"The longer the children stay out of school the
more difficult it is for them to catch up on their lost learning and the more
prone they are to becoming a lost generation, falling prey to exploitation
including child marriage, child labour, and recruitment into armed
groups," UNRWA Director of Communications Juliette Touma told Reuters.
In addition to the 625,000 Gazans already registered
for school who would be missing classes, another 58,000 six-year-olds should
have registered to start first grade this year, the education ministry said.
Last month, UNRWA launched a back-to-learning
programme in 45 of its shelters, with teachers setting up games, drama, arts, music
and sports activities to help with children's mental health.
'THE SPECIFIED AREA HAS BEEN WARNED'
Nearly all of Gaza's 2.3 million people have been
forced from their homes at least once, and some have had to flee as many as 10
times.
aIn the latest evacuation order, Israel told residents
of an area in the northern Gaza Strip they must leave their homes, following
the firing of rockets into southern Israel the previous day.
"To all those in the specified area. Terrorist
organisations are once again firing rockets at the State of Israel and carrying
out terrorist acts from this area. The specified area has been warned many
times in the past. The specified area is considered a dangerous combat
zone," an Israeli military spokesperson said in Arabic on X.
The United Nations urged Palestinians in the northern
Gaza Strip to attend medical facilities to get children under the age of 10
years old vaccinated against polio. Limited pauses in fighting have been held
to allow the vaccination campaign, which aims to reach 640,000 children in Gaza
after the territory's first polio case in around 25 years.
U.N. officials said the campaign in the southern and
central Gaza Strip had so far reached more than half of the children there
needing the drops. A second round of vaccination will be required four weeks
after the first.
Later on Monday, Touma said 450,000 of the children
targeted with the campaign were vaccinated.
"Tuesday is the hardest part when we roll out the
campaign in the north. Hopefully, that will work so we complete the first stage
of the campaign The second and final stage is planned for the end of the month
when we have to do all of this all over again," said Touma.
Health officials said on Monday two separate Israeli
airstrikes had killed seven people in central Gaza, while another strike killed
one man in Khan Younis further south.
The armed wings of Hamas and the Islamic Jihad said
they fought against Israeli forces in several areas across the Gaza Strip with
anti-tank rockets and mortar fire.
The Israeli military said forces continued to
dismantle military infrastructure and killed dozens of militants in the past
days, including senior Hamas and Islamic Jihad commanders.
The war was triggered on Oct. 7 when the Hamas group
that ran Gaza attacked Israel, killing 1,200 and taking about 250 hostages,
according to Israeli tallies. Israel's subsequent assault on Gaza has killed
more than 40,900 Palestinians, according to the enclave's health ministry.
The two warring sides each blame the other for the
failure so far to reach a ceasefire that would end the fighting and see the
release of hostages.