Lebanon's children shelter in schools amid war

Children play football at a school, housing families displaced from the south of Lebanon, in Beirut on October 5, 2024. The head of the United Nations refugee agency arrived in Lebanon on October 4, on a "solidarity" visit for those affected by Israeli bombardment, decrying a "terrible crisis" that requires international support. [AFP]

When Ali al-Akbar returned to school in Lebanon this year after the summer holidays, it wasn't to study his favourite subject maths but to seek refuge from Israeli air strikes.

"I miss my friends and teachers," the 14-year-old wearing glasses told AFP inside a classroom-turned-shelter in Beirut's southern suburbs.

Lebanon has postponed the start of the school year after Israel increased its air strikes against the Lebanese militant group Hezbollah since September 23.

The escalation has killed more than 1,100 people and pushed upwards of a million people to flee their homes, according to government figures.

Israeli strikes have displaced some 40 percent of Lebanon's 1.2 million pupils from their homes, an education ministry official told AFP.

As half the country's 1,200 public schools have been turned into makeshift bedrooms for the homeless, the ministry has postponed the start of the school year from October 1 to November 4.

But Ali's mother, 37-year-old Batoul Arouni, isn't convinced they will be able to reopen by then.

"No mother wants her child to miss out on school, but this year I'd rather he stayed by my side as nowhere in Lebanon is safe anymore," she said.

Chairs and desks have been pushed back in the classroom to make way for thin foam mattresses, and tomatoes sit on a desk near the window.

Clean laundry hangs out to dry near the blackboard.

Throughout the school, hot meals and water bottles provided by charities have replaced the usual books and pens.

While AFP visited, the sound of strikes could be heard.

Elsewhere in the school, eight-year-old Fatima too said she was sad.

"I miss school and colouring books," she said.

In central Beirut, 30-year-old Salma Salman hugged her seven-year-old twin daughters to her chest.

"Who's thinking about sending their children to school with this war?" she said.

"We've been in the street for two weeks, no one's thinking about education right now."

Jennifer Moorehead, of the Save the Children charity, said she thought the school system was "not going to recover this year".

It is just the latest school year to be disrupted after the Covid pandemic and years of a financial crisis that has plunged most of the population into poverty.
"It will be generations before Lebanon will recover from this learning loss," she said.

In the south of Lebanon, the school year has been disrupted for almost a year as Israel and Hezbollah traded cross-border fire after the start of the Gaza war.

But that disruption had not extended to other parts of the country until the recent escalation.

Education Minister Abbas Halabi said his team was looking into adapting to current events, possibly combining in-person lessons with remote learning.

But in past years parents have said they could not afford to buy smartphones for their children, let alone guarantee they would work with constant power cuts disrupting the internet.
And many displaced families said they could not carry laptops or tablets with them as they fled.

Even without these obstacles, not everyone enjoys online learning.

In her upscale home in Beirut, Nour Khawajeh, 36, sat trying to help her seven-year-old daughter Joud focus on a French lesson online.

But the little girl, whose private school closed just four days into the new academic day, was bored.

"Children need to go to the courtyard to play and see others their age," said Khawajeh, who has already paid 70 percent of the school's tuition fees.

She and her husband have been re-organising their schedule so they can help look after their daughter and her little brother, four-year-old Issa.

"Mothers and fathers are not teachers," she said.

"I have no patience."