Education in ruins: Gaza's children face dire consequences of ongoing conflict and neglect

Umm Khaled makes bread for her children inside a school housing displaced people in Jabalia camp, north of Gaza City, 06 May 2025. (Photo: EPA-EFE / HAITHAM IMAD)

By Siyabonga Goni

8 May 2025

The war waged by Israel against Palestine has denied children the right to education after schools have been closed and many children killed, said Dr Noam Peleg at Equal Education’s third annual Yoliswa Dwane Lecture.

In the past year and a half, Israel has devastated much of Gaza's infrastructure, killing more than 16,000 Palestinian children and depriving many of the opportunity to get an education.

On Tuesday, 6 May 2025, Equal Education, a youth-led, mass democratic movement of learners, post-school youth, parents, teachers and community members who defend the rights of learners facing exclusionary policies, hosted their third annual Yoliswa Dwane Lecture at the University of Cape Town, speaking about Gaza, children’s rights and international law.

At the beginning of the lecture, Equal Education’s Head of Organising in the Western Cape, Nontsikelelo Dlulani, reflected on Dwane’s words of empowerment: “The institution does not define your activism, you are an activist before the institution.”

this year the guest lecturer was Dr Noam Peleg, an Associate Professor at the University of New South Wales’ Faculty of Law and Justice, and an associate at the Australian Human Rights Institute, who advocates for children’s rights.

Dr Noam Peleg, an associate Professor at University of New South Wales faculty of Law and Justice, and an associate at the Australian Human Rights Institute.
(Photo: UNSW Sydney)

Peleg works in international children’s rights law and authored the book The Child’s Right to Development.

He painted a disheartening image of the situation faced by school children in Gaza. Peleg said that since the war started, all schools in Gaza had been destroyed or closed, while families were struggling to access medical services for children suffering from disease and trauma.

Education denied

“The Israeli legal system is both complicit and a key enabler in the genocide in Gaza, and for generations it was a key player in the war against Palestinian children… It denied the right to education, the right to health, the right to family life, the right to identity, the right to non-discrimination, the right to non-descrimination, and the right to life,” said Peleg.

During the lecture, Peleg spoke about the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child that became the most widely ratified human rights treaty in history, and which has helped transform children’s lives around the world, allowing them the right to education. However, Peleg said this was not the case in Gaza.

“Nearly all schools in Gaza have been destroyed by Israel since October 2023 and no child has attended school on a regular basis since. Children have no place to get physical education. They are displaced and… some of the teachers and children have been killed,” said Peleg.

Internally displaced Palestinians receive food from a charity kitchen in Khan Yunis in the southern Gaza Strip on 2 May 2025. According to the UN Palestinian refugee agency UNRWA, more than a million people across the Gaza Strip are experiencing 'high levels' of acute food insecurity. (Photo: EPA-EFE / Haitham Imad)

Umm Khaled makes bread for her children inside a school housing displaced people in Jabalia camp, north of Gaza City, on 6 May 2025. (Photo: EPA-EFE / Haitham Imad)

He argued that international law was failing because, despite the widespread ratification of the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child, children had been victims of genocide and other war crimes throughout the 20th century. He said many children in Gaza, as well as Sudan, Cambodia, and even across Europe, did not enjoy any of the protections that adults promised them.

Israel has strenuously denied that its war amounts to genocide and that it is defending its citizens from the threat posed by Hamas, which led the 7 October 2023 attack that killed 1,200 people and led to Israel’s assault.

Daily Maverick has previously reported that Human Rights Watch said the displacement of Palestinians “is likely planned to be permanent in the buffer zones and security corridors”, an action it said would amount to “ethnic cleansing”.

Read more: Human Rights Watch accuses Israel of war crimes over Gaza displacements

Mentioning stories of struggling families, Peleg shared a story of Raina, a 20-month-old baby from Gaza who was living with cancer and needed chemotherapy. Raina could not get the treatment, not because there were no nurses or oncologists, but, Peleg said, because “Israel systematically and deliberately destroyed the availability of the healthcare system in Gaza. As a result, children like Raina are at the mercy of Israel.

“A 50-minute drive from where she lives, there is a hospital where she can receive the life-saving treatment that she needs. The problem is that this hospital is in the city of Ashkelon within Israel in [1948] territory. She used to be treated here, but her entry permit was revoked by Israel overnight, and her parents were told that this had been done due to security concerns. Preventing Raina from getting chemotherapy means one thing and one thing only — that she will die from cancer very soon,” said Peleg.

Children a target

“Genocide justifiers claim that there are no innocent people in Gaza, not even children, and therefore killing them is legitimate and necessary in order to create a permanent state of security. Some Israelis go as far as claiming that it is essential to kill Palestinian children if they are the next generation of terrorists,” said Peleg.

He told the audience that in Gaza children were suffering, had lost the muscle mass in their bodies and didn’t have access to adequate nutrition.

Read more: Legal opinion expected after ICJ concludes hearings on Israel’s aid obligations in Gaza

“There is almost no food in Gaza, and this is a result of what Israel has imposed on Gaza since the war broke. Children go hungry and eventually die from hunger.”

Israel has argued that Gaza has sufficient aid to sustain its population and that it is not suffering a hunger crisis.

Speaking on how to prevent children from dying, Peleg quoted a statement by Save the Children that there needed to be an urgent response to treat and screen them in time.

“To prevent children from dying of starvation and malnutrition, you need to be able to reach them, screen them and treat them. We need to access communities. We need to be able to provide supplementary treatments for children,” said Peleg. DM

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Children a target