New Delhi, June 9 -- The number was not announced with ceremony. It appeared in a written statement from the Palestinian Ministry of Education, released Tuesday, and it is the kind of figure that takes a moment to hold: 20,814 students killed across Gaza and the West Bank since October 7, 2023.

children and university-age adults - who were in classrooms when the war began and are no longer alive. Gaza accounts for 20,480 of them. The other 167 died in the occupied West Bank, where Israeli military forces and settlers have carried out raids, live-fire operations, and what the ministry describes as repeated assaults on academic institutions.

The 1,054 education staff killed in the same period - 1,048 of them in Gaza - represent a category...