Last month, I was waiting for a shared taxi at the Nuseirat roundabout when I witnessed a heartbreaking scene. As I stood by the side of the road, I felt a small hand tugging at my clothes.
I looked down and saw a little girl, no older than eight. She was barefoot, her shirt was torn, and her hair was messy and unwashed. Her eyes were beautiful, and her face showed innocence, yet exhaustion and despair clouded it.
She pleaded: “Please, please, give me just one shekel, God bless you.”
Before I gave her the money, I decided to speak with her. I knelt down and asked, “What is your name, my dear?”
She replied in a frightened voice, “My name is Nour, and I am from the north.” Her name, which means “light” in Arabic, stood in stark contrast to the darkness surrounding her.
I asked her, “Why are you asking for money, Nour?”
She looked at me hesitantly, then whispered, “I want to buy an apple… I crave one.”
In Gaza, a single apple now costs $7; before the war, a kilogramme of apples was less than a dollar.
I tried to ignore the pain rising in my chest. I thought about the circumstances we now face, where young children are forced to beg in the street just to buy an apple.
I gave Nour one shekel ($0.30), but as soon as I did, the situation worsened. A large group of children, all Nour’s age or younger, gathered around me, repeating the same request. I felt immense distress.
For more than two years, we have faced genocide. We have witnessed countless tragedies and horrors. But for me, the sight of children begging in the streets is particularly unbearable.
Before the war, Gaza was still a poor place. We used to see child beggars, but they were few, mostly roaming in a few areas. Now, they are everywhere, from the north to the south.
The genocidal war has destroyed families and livelihoods across Gaza. The carnage has orphaned more than 39,000 children, and the enormous destruction has deprived more than 80 percent of the workforce of their jobs, driving countless children into extreme poverty and forcing them to beg for survival.
But child begging is not just a result of poverty; it is a sign of a deep disintegration affecting the family, the education system, and the community. No parent sends their child to beg because they want to. The war has left many families in Gaza without options, and in many cases, there are no surviving parents to keep the children away from the streets.
Child beggars do not just lose their childhood; they also face exploitation, harsh labour, illiteracy and psychological trauma that leaves a lasting effect.
The more begging children increase in number, the more the hope for this generation diminishes. Houses can be rebuilt, infrastructure can be restored, but a young generation that is deprived of education and hope for the future cannot be rehabilitated.
The strength Gaza possessed before the war was not just about military power; it was about human power, the main pillar of which was education. We had one of the highest levels of literacy in the world. The enrolment rate for primary education stood at 95 percent; for higher education, it reached 44 percent.
Education stood as a counterforce to the debilitating siege that dispossessed the people of Gaza and crippled the economy. It nourished skills and ingenuity within the young generations to help them cope with an increasingly harsh economic reality. More importantly, education gave children a sense of direction, security and pride.
The systematic attack on Gaza’s education system – the destruction of schools, universities, libraries and the killing of teachers and professors – has pushed what used to be a remarkably resilient and effective educational system to the brink. The pillar that protected children and guaranteed them a clear future is now falling apart.
After I left the Nuseirat roundabout, Nour’s eyes stayed with me. It was not just because of the pain of seeing an innocent child being forced to beg. It was also because of the realisation that this encounter brought about: That the capacity of the next generation to rebuild Gaza one day is being taken away.
The world allowed Israel to carry out genocide in Gaza for two years. It knew what was going on, and yet it chose complicity and silence. Today, it cannot erase its guilt, but it can choose to redeem itself. It can take all necessary action to save the children of Gaza and to grant them the rights they are inherently given by the Convention on the Rights of Children: The right to food, water, healthcare, a safe environment, education, and protection from violence and abuse.
Anything short of that would mean continuing support for the slow genocide of Gaza.
The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Al Jazeera’s editorial stance.
