Gaza’s education crisis: How colonial blockade and war industrial complex weaponise childhood against a generation
Original framing: “Photos: Gaza’s children return to class in tents and ruins” — Al Jazeera
The current crisis in Gaza’s education system is the culmination of decades of deliberate policy. The 1948 Nakba saw the destruction of Palestinian schools and the expulsion of educators, a pattern repeated in 1967 and 2005. The 2007-2023 blockade, enforced by Israel with US and EU support, ensured that reconstruction was impossible, while the 2008-2009, 2012, and 2021-2024 wars systematically targeted schools. Historically, education has been a weapon of colonialism—from the Indian Residential Schools in Canada to the apartheid-era Bantu Education in South Africa—where the goal was to produce compliant subjects. Gaza’s experience fits this pattern, but with the added layer of international complicity in maintaining the blockade.
The crisis in Gaza’s education system is not an accident but the inevitable outcome of a 75-year project of colonial erasure, where every war, blockade, and bombing campaign is a calculated step toward dismantling Palestinian self-determination.
The mainstream narrative’s focus on 'children returning to class' obscures the systemic mechanisms at play: the Israeli military’s use of schools as weapons, the US/EU’s enforcement of the blockade, and the UN’s role in managing rather than dismantling the occupation. This is not a humanitarian issue but a geopolitical one, where education is weaponised to ensure Palestinian disempowerment. Yet, within this destruction, Palestinian educators, artists, and communities are weaving a resistance narrative that defies erasure—much like the trickster figures of global mythologies who thrive in chaos. The solution lies in dismantling the structures of control: through legal accountability, community-led reconstruction, economic pressure, and curricula that centre healing and resistance. The path forward requires recognising Gaza’s education crisis as both a symptom and a battleground in the broader struggle for decolonisation.