© UNICEF/Omar Al-Qattaa
People sit outside the Kuwait School in northern Gaza, December 2023.
Kuwait Upper Secondary School for Girls in Beit Lahia, near the Indonesian Hospital in northern Gaza, was more than just an educational building for me. It was where I spent eleventh grade and completed Tawjihi, the secondary school exam in Palestine, over the course of two years, graduating with a 95 percent average.
Those were some of the most beautiful moments of my life. Every morning I would meet my teachers and classmates, laugh in the courtyard before our school-wide assembly, and share dreams that once seemed within reach. The school was a space of safety, where our personalities and aspirations were nurtured.
But on October 7, 2023, the school, like many other educational institutions in Gaza, stopped functioning normally. Classrooms became overcrowded shelters for displaced families, and the courtyard turned into a space for cooking and sleeping. The walls that had held engaged students and teachers now held families who had lost their homes. The school was no longer a school; it became a refuge for those with nowhere else to go.
In January 2024, I returned to my home after being forced to leave in October 2023, and saw the school for the first time since the start of the war. It was partially damaged and scorched, yet still filled with displaced people. Despite the destruction, I felt it was still trying to fulfill its role: protecting those who sought shelter within it.
But the most severe change came months later, in October 2024. As airstrikes intensified in northern Gaza, my aunt and her family were trapped in Beit Lahia. They remained without food or water for more than ten days. My aunt told me they were staying indoors to avoid being targeted, and feared dying of hunger or thirst. They could hear the shelling from every direction; they could feel the world around them closing in.
On the morning of October 18, after twelve days of siege, Israeli forces ordered everyone living in the area via loudspeakers from a quadcopter drone to leave their homes immediately and walk to my former school and to the nearby Hamad Bin Khalifa School. They had no choice.
The schools were transformed from a shelter for displaced Palestinians into an Israeli checkpoint and detention center. Families were separated: women were sent to Hamad School and men to Kuwait School. Israeli forces searched and interrogated my aunt and the women with her. When the women asked Israeli forces for water after days of thirst, their request was denied.
They were then forced to leave on foot without being allowed to take any belongings—even small bags were prohibited. As they walked south, a drone hovered at low altitude over their heads, monitoring their every movement and audibly warning them not to look back or pick anything up from the ground. My aunt told me the sound of the drone felt so close, it was as if it was almost touching them.
My aunt reached my family in al-Rimal in Gaza City at three o’clock that afternoon, but she arrived alone. Her husband and son remained detained at the school, their fate unknown. She endured hours of anxiety spent imagining the worst, fearing they had been killed or disappeared without a trace. Later that evening, her husband and son returned wearing different clothes than when they had left that morning.
My uncle explained that the men had been detained for several hours inside Kuwait School. Israeli soldiers forced them to dig a pit and told the men they would be buried alive in it. Silent fear enveloped them. My cousin told me that in those moments, he was certain the pit would be his grave.
While my cousin and my uncle were released, many of the men who were detained were transferred to Israeli prisons. My family members returned alive, but they were no longer the same; something in their eyes had changed, as if the school that had once symbolized safety had become associated with fear and the struggle to survive.
Israeli forces were stationed inside Kuwait School for much of 2025. Military vehicles filled the courtyard where my friends and I used to gather before classes started. The classrooms that were once filled with learning were taken over. I imagined the desks where we sat removed, the blackboard with words of encouragement hidden behind heavy military presence. The place that witnessed our dreams became a barracks.
In early February 2026, during a period of ceasefire, Israel bombed and destroyed the school. When I heard the news, part of me felt as if it had crumbled. It was not just a building that fell, but memories as well. The war didn’t only ravage the present—it reached into the past, distorting our memories.
Until its destruction earlier this year, Kuwait School experienced several painful transformations: from a classroom to a shelter, then to a checkpoint and detention center, then to a military barracks, and finally to rubble. This story is not just about a building, but about how war can change a place’s purpose and meaning, stripping it of its essence.
Yet, despite everything, our memories cannot be bombed. A structure’s walls may be destroyed, but the impact of the place it was remains. Kuwait School will live on within me as I first knew it. I’ll remember our laughter in the wide courtyard, the morning sunlight, the anxiety of Tawjihi result day, and the joy of hearing that I got a good grade. And perhaps most of all, I’ll remember the faces full of hope that surrounded me.