Gaza war blocks exams and shatters Palestinian pupils' dreams

Teenagers across the Gaza Strip should have been taking their final exams this month, a last hurdle before university and lifelong dreams, but the war in the Palestinian territory has crushed those hopes.

According to the education ministry in the Hamas-run Gaza Strip, 85 percent of educational facilities in the territory are out of service because of the war.

"I was eagerly awaiting the exams, but the war prevented that and destroyed that joy", said Baraa al-Farra, an 18-year-old student displaced from Khan Yunis in southern Gaza.

"At first we were waiting in the hope that the war would end and we would catch up," he said.

But "we don't know how long it will last or how many years it will deprive us of our educational lives."

Israel launched its war on Gaza in retaliation for the Hamas' Oct. 7 attacks that resulted in the deaths of more than 1,190 people, mostly civilians, according to Israeli official figures.

Israel's offensive has killed more than 37,000 people in Gaza, mostly civilians, according to the Hamas-run territory's health ministry.

The Education Cluster, a U.N.-backed organisation, estimated in a report this month that more than 75 percent of Gaza's schools would need full reconstruction or major rehabilitation to reopen.

Many have been turned into shelters for Gaza's displaced and others have been damaged in bombardment.

  'Books not bombs' 

Liliane Nihad, an 18-year-old displaced to Khan Yunis from Gaza City, in the territory's north, said she and her fellow students had "been waiting 12 years to take these exams and pass and feel happy and enter university... but we have been deprived of all that by this damned war".

Nihad said she had...