Gaza’s education system lies in ruins after two years of relentless war, leaving hundreds of thousands of children without classrooms or hope, UNICEF warned Thursday, saying the territory is on the brink of losing an entire generation to conflict and despair.
“This is the third year that there has been no school,” Edouard Beigbeder, the U.N. agency’s regional director for the Middle East and North Africa, told AFP in Jerusalem on Thursday after returning from the Palestinian territory.
“If we don’t start a real transition for all children in February, we will enter a fourth year. And then we can talk about a lost generation.”
The devastating conflict between Israel and Hamas has reduced swaths of Gaza to rubble, displaced the vast majority of its population at least once and crippled public services.
Palestinian student Raghad Loai Mhanna, who passed her high school exams while living in a tent after being displaced during the war, sits inside her tent in Deir al-Balah, central Gaza Strip, Oct.19, 2025. (Reuters Photo)
