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00:0012-year-old Rama Abu Saif should be going into 7th grade.
00:05Last year I was supposed to be in 6th grade, but we missed the whole year because of the
00:10war.
00:11Now, instead of studying in a classroom, her and her family have been living in one, at
00:15a school-turned-shelter in Deir al-Bala in the central Gaza Strip.
00:20Their home in northern Gaza was destroyed and the children's educations have fallen
00:24by the wayside amid the struggle of daily life now.
00:30Instead of waking up and going to school, now we wake up, wash our faces.
00:34It takes us an hour to wash our faces.
00:36Then we line up in a long queue for the bathroom.
00:39When we finish, we have to go get water, and the queue for water is of course very, very
00:43long.
00:44Then when it's time to eat, we queue up in front of the charity kitchens like everyone
00:48else and the queue there is very long.
00:50It's a struggle.
00:53Like Rama, 625,000 children in Gaza have been out of school for nearly a year, while 85
01:00per cent of school buildings have been directly hit or damaged by Israel's continuing bombardment.
01:08Our books, we used to open them.
01:09We kept them in our bags.
01:11We used to study them, but now they're used to spark fires.
01:15Wherever we go, we find them used in ovens and for warmth.
01:20On Monday, UNRWA's Commissioner General warned that the longer a ceasefire was delayed and
01:25children stayed out of school, the greater the risk of a lost generation, fuelling poverty,
01:30resentment and extremism.