New school year kicks off for Palestinian students amid atmosphere of sadness

On Monday around 1.4 million Palestinian students began a new school year in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip, according to the Ramallah-based education ministry. 

In the early morning, Palestinian students rushed to their schools after the end of the summer vacation. Some went to schools run by the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA), while others joined governmental schools, and the rest attended private schools in Palestine. 

This time, there was no joy that tends to come on the first day of the new school year for students, especially for those who lost classmates during the recent Israeli attack on the besieged Gaza Strip.

Once the fifth-grade students of a school located in Khan Younis city in southern Gaza arrived at their classroom, many began to cry when they found a picture of their classmate Layan al-Shaer occupying her seat instead of herself. 

The ten-year-old girl died from an injury in an Israeli strike during the 3-day military conflict with the Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ) in Gaza earlier this month, which killed at least 50 people, including 17 children, and wounded about 360. 

"I will no longer be able to meet my friend or even play and study with her," Retal al-Shaer, Layan's friend, said to The New Arab. 

"We used to come to our school together," the girl recalled. "It is painful to lose her." 

Retal expressed her sadness toward Layan's family.

Ibrahim Sharif, a 17-year-old from Beit Lahia town in northern Gaza, lost his best friend and classmate Hamid Nejim in the latest Israeli assault.

Hamid and four other children were killed during an Israeli attack that targeted them while they were visiting their grandfather's grave in a cemetery in Jabalia refugee camp on the 7th of August.

Following the attack, the Israeli army blamed the deaths on a rogue Islamic Jihad rocket, however, they retracted and admitted their responsibility for the deaths. 

"I did not expect in the worst of things that my friend and colleague would leave so quickly, and leave me alone in life and on the study bench. It is the worst experience I have lived in my life,”  the 17-year-old Ibrahim told The New Arab. 

"Hamed was my best friend. He was very funny, with good morals. I considered him more than a brother to me," he said.  

"The worst feeling I felt was when I went to school alone and sat on our seat, and he was not next to me, especially since the last school year was all the time accompanying on the same seat," he added. 

Ziad Thabet, Undersecretary of the Hamas-run Ministry of Education, told The New Arab that "despite all the insecurity situation in the area, we insist on launching our new school year." 

"We have to deliver our message to the world that the Palestinian people love life and seek freedom, and our aspirations are to build the nation and create an educated, educated, and conscious generation," Thebet said. 

To reintegrate the students into the educational process once again, Thabet noted the first week of school will start with some educational programs for psychological support for the children.