This week Al Israa University became the latest major public building in Gaza to disappear from the map, blown up and destroyed by Israeli forces who had reportedly used it as a military base for several weeks.
The war in Gaza has already let to an unprecedented loss of life, but there’s also growing concern about the destruction of public and private buildings.
Now a senior UN official has told BBC News of his fears that the widespread damage will lead to a “lost generation” of young people.
Israel declared war on Hamas after the group led a massive attack on communities inside Israel, killing about 1,200 people – mostly civilians – and taking some 240 others back to Gaza as hostages.
Around 130 remain in captivity. Almost 25,000 Palestinians have since been killed in Gaza, according to the Hamas-run health ministry,
The United Nations’ Office for the Co-ordination of Humanitarian Affairs (Ocha) publishes regular bulletins on the impact of the war, and they make for grim reading.
Its latest updates say that at least 60% of homes or housing units in Gaza have been “destroyed or damaged”. Nine in every 10 schools have suffered “significant damage”. Hospitals, public buildings and electricity networks have also been hit.
Amir Mohammed Al-Najjari is 22 years old. He’s originally from Jabalia in northern Gaza but has been forced with his family to move to a makeshift camp near Khan Younis in the south.
He and his siblings have seen their dreams disappear in clouds of smoke.
“My sister was studying in the third year of Al-Quds University, but it was bombed. And my brother was in his final year of school, at Khalil Al-Rahman school, but it too was bombed,” says Amir sitting outside the makeshift tent the family now calls home.
His own predicament mirrors his brother’s and sister’s.
“I have finished my degree in engineering. If there was no war, I would have a job interview and perhaps I would have been accepted. Finally, there’s my younger brother, who is in the seventh grade. He was studying in the UN school. Nothing is left of it.”
Like any society, Gaza’s future is its children. But here, they’re disproportionately victims of war and, says the UN, may lose out completely on what should be rightfully theirs
Phillippe Lazzarini is the Commissioner General for UNRWA – the UN agency with specific responsibility for Palestinian refugees. He’s just returned from his fourth visit to Gaza since the start of the war.
“There are today more than half a million children in the primary and secondary school system. How will they go back if you cannot bring people back to their homes which have been completely destroyed,” Mr Lazzarini tells me.
“And I’m afraid that we’re running the risk here of losing a generation of children.”
