Gaza: Schools reopened in Gaza on Saturday after Israel's devastating three-week war, and peaceful coexistence seemed further than ever from the traumatised minds of young Palestinians.
"Good morning! Still alive?" excited teenage girls asked each other as their class, all in white headscarves, lined up in the yard shortly after dawn at Beach Preparatory School.
The pupils were seeing their teachers for the first time since Israel bombs began falling on Gaza on December 27.
Critics warn that the violence of Israel's offensive, which followed the collapse of a six-month truce, can only reap a harvest of greater militancy from a newly radicalised generation.
"Israel hates Palestinians, hates Arabs, hates Muslims, hates Islam," said one girl in Nuha Abdul Ati's English class, as her schoolmates nodded in agreement.
Older Gazans who want compromise with Israel regret the high price of this 'resistance'.
But in the classrooms at Beach Prep, any suggestion of making peace now was dismissed.
Asked if the current ceasefire would endure, most girls said they did not think so. Asked if there could be peace with Israel one day, most said there could not. None said it was possible.
The girls seemed delighted to be back in class together, although the stories they had to swap were grim tales of dead cousins, wounded neighbours, close escapes, days without power or water, camping in the homes of relatives.
Asked why they were smiling, the girls said they were happy to be alive and safe, because during the bombing they had gone to sleep each night afraid they would never wake up again.
The West is seen as callous, uncaring, and pro-Israeli. "They cry for Israelis because they lose a fingernail. They don't care if Palestinians get their heads blown off," said teacher Susan Mosleh.
"Israel attacked at the time of our exams because it wants to destroy our education," said a 15-year-old in her class. "It is not Hamas they want to kill. It is all Palestinians and their resistance."
Many 200 UN-run schools in Gaza were used as shelters for at least 100,000 people were displaced by weeks of fighting between Hamas and Israel.
As many as 200,000 students attend the 221 schools run by the UN refugee agency across Gaza .
Christopher Gunness, a spokesman for the UN Relief and Works Agency, said more than 30 schools had been damaged or destroyed in the conflict.
He said the agency hoped to restore a "sense of normalcy" by reopening the schools, many of which have not been completely repaired.
