GAZA STRIP (Dispatches) – Eight-year-old Mohammed Shaaban sits on the front bench of a classroom listening intently to the teacher, trying his best to follow the lesson.
The second-grader is with his classmates at a school in Beit Lahia, north of the Gaza Strip, but only temporarily. He lost his sight during the Zionist regime’s intense bombing campaign on the Gaza Strip, and now the school administration has refused to let him continue to study there as they can’t accommodate his disability.
On that fateful day in May, Mohammed had just finished shopping for the holiday of Eid al-Fitr with his mother and cousin when a rocket landed in the marketplace and sent shrapnel flying, some hitting him in the face.
Three weeks later, he was transferred to a hospital in Egypt to receive treatment for the injury. The doctors told his father that Mohammed’s case was “hopeless”.
“One of his eyes had been destroyed by the shrapnel, so there is absolutely no hope in treating it,” his father, Hani Shaaban, told Middle East Eye (MEE).
“The other one was severely damaged, and the doctors told us that he would never be able to see with it again.”
Mohammed’s tragedy was far from unique. According to the United Nations human rights agency, OHCHR, 66 children and 40 women were among the 256 Palestinians killed during the Zionist regime’ 11-day attack on the blockaded land. Of the children killed, 51 were school-age students. Around 470 other children were injured in the attacks.
More than 50 educational facilities were damaged in the bombardment, including schools, kindergartens, and the Islamic University in central Gaza.
Furthermore, the Explosive Ordnance Disposal (EOD) team from the interior ministry in Gaza said it had located four unexploded Israeli bombs that remained buried in the ground under schools run by Unrwa - the UN agency for Palestinian refugees.
Elsewhere in Beit Lahia, Mohammed al-Attar, a father of four, recounted the day when he enrolled his six-year-old daughter Amira in the first grade.
“The school principal asked her to count to 10 and to say the letters in Arabic. She did and they were impressed at how clever she was. They admitted her to school and she was super happy,” the father told MEE.
Amira couldn’t wait to share the news with her mother as soon as they got home, and her older brother Islam, 8, had already begun planning their first day at school together.
“Islam told Amira that he would walk her to her school in the morning before going to his own school, and then in the afternoon, he would take her home with him.”
His daughter was most excited about shopping for school supplies, and she was adamant about the colour she wanted for her school bag - it had to be pink, Attar said.
He also praised Islam for being both a good brother and student.
But the siblings never got to go to school together. “The bombing arrived much faster,” said the father.
On 14 May, five Zionist strikes hit Attar’s neighborhood without prior warning, completely destroying the building that housed six residential flats.