I first met Nick Bilbrough when he came to Berlin several years ago. Since then he has been running the Hands Up Project (HUP) which provides educational opportunities to Palestinian children via remote learning. Through the use of drama and storytelling activities, volunteer teachers connect these children to the wider world and promote ‘mutual understanding, personal growth, and the development of English language skills’.
Yesterday Nick posted the above tweet about the possible destruction of a school where he had worked. I contacted him and some of the teachers to get a better idea of what is happening on the ground.
What follows is a brief account of the situation there from Nick and Ashraf, a Palestinian teacher at Al Aqsa primary school in Gaza.
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Your tweet stated that a school was ‘about to be destroyed by Israel’? Can you say something about your involvement with the school and what the situation is now?
Nick: Boys from the Al Aqsa school made this short play [above] which was one of the finalists in the 2019 Hands Up Project remote theatre competition. Also Ashraf, Erica, me and a teacher in Serbia, Filip, did lot of links with the students there. Ashraf can say more about the situation there right now.
Ashraf: I’m Ashraf Kuhail and I’m an English language teacher in Gaza, Palestine, now working as a supervisor. I’ve enjoyed linking my pupils up with the Hands Up project volunteers since 2017. In 2019, I linked my students at Al Aqsa primary school with a Serbian teacher called Filip. Months later, I linked up the neighboring school, Al Boraq primary school for girls with Erica from Italy, and we had some great times. The kids enjoyed listening to stories, learning English and doing drama. We made three plays and one of them was among the finalists and at the end of the year we arranged an amazing celebration event that students will never forget. [For more on Ashraf’s work with HUP see this blog post.]
Nick: That children, teachers, everyone, is going to be killed. That schools are going to be destroyed.
Over the past nine years I’ve worked both online and face to face with Palestinian students, teachers and teacher trainers. The Hands up Project has grown into a huge global family with connections to Palestine in every corner of the world. We have many colleagues and very close friends who live there, and we know Palestinians to be fun loving, warm and hospitable people who are very well educated and appreciative of education, despite the almost unbearably challenging circumstances they live in.
We are all extremely concerned about the human rights violations that are being inflicted on the general public right now. Imagine the impact on children’s mental health and well-being to be huddled together with the whole family in a corridor or stairway (often the safest place) listening to heavy bombing happening all around you. This picture was sent to me by a friend who is a teacher in Gaza. It was taken two nights ago. She now has over twenty people living in her house because the homes of so many people have been destroyed.
It’s clear that this is a deliberate and brutal attempt to completely destabilise an already unstable society. So many beautiful places have already been destroyed. Today a bookshop was brought to the ground and the threat to Al Aqsa school and the neighbouring one still continues.
Neither is it just in Gaza that extreme violent acts are being committed against Palestinians. The ongoing land grab in the occupied West Bank goes on, people are continuously being turfed out of their homes to give way to illegal settlers, and there is an increase in violence against Palestinians by mobs within Israel. There was a general strike among teachers in the West Bank today in solidarity with their colleagues in Gaza.
Ashraf: No one is safe here. All the dead people thought they were safe. The places that have been targets over the last three nights are right in the center of Gaza, very crowded with residential buildings and stores. It’s the hub of Gaza city with no military activity.
People who lived there believed that they were in the safest place in Gaza. Then, without any warning, Israel attacked the place with in GBU bombs and destroyed the houses. In one night, about 45 people went under the rubble, and around 70% of them were women and children.
No one is safe here. Every night I pray before sleeping.
Is there anything that you’d like people in the ELT community to be aware of right now? Is there anything that people can do?
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