The French newspaper "Le Monde" published a report emphasizing the negative effects caused by Israeli occupation on higher education in Gaza, whereas all 12 universities in the region have been destroyed or seriously damaged.
The newspaper" reported how the Israeli occupation forces had destroyed all the institutions of higher education within the Palestinian territory killing three university presidents, some 100 deans, and university professors killed by Israeli force.
According to Bisan Al-Qulagh, gaining admission to a university in Gaza, for example, was hailed as a "gateway to independence" for Palestinians. She remembers how ecstatic she was, receiving the call with the news of her acceptance into the Clinical Pharmacy program in September 2021. Now, her university is nothing but a heap of rubble: the Israeli army bombed and eradicated it in December 2023, two months after the war on Gaza.
Meanwhile, the Israeli occupation army has, since destroyed or damaged, making strikes and shelling, 12 universities in Gaza. It is such that, almost 75% of the educational infrastructure regions stand to be affected, included in the above-listed educational establishments, the United Nations notes.
"Gaza used to be very beautiful. My university, not far from the sea, was very wonderful. Before October 7th, Gaza was that place," said Bisan, a 20-year-old student of Gaza. In Sharjah, which is in the United Arab Emirates, her father works. She said that while a bachelor's degree takes three years in this Gulf emirate, and more so in her case, "100,000 dirhams (25,000 euros)" would be lost and concluded, "We didn't have [the resources]," and this would probably explain why she was beside herself on obtaining a seat at one the universities in Gaza.
"I no longer know what to do with my life"
At eighteen years of age, she left the house of her parents and went on to live with her grandparents in the city of Gaza, residing very near to the university campus. Bisan had got accustomed to sharing videos of herself with friends through her Instagram, either at the university, in the classroom with friends, or even in the laboratory breathing in chemistry.
She had landed in Abu Dhabi at the end of February and was evacuated with her mother and sisters. "The two years I spent at the University of Palestine were the best thing that ever happened in my life. Today, I don't have a clue what my future will turn out to be. What would happen to two years of my studies that have no value anymore? Have they all gone to waste?" she asked.
Killing Over 95 Deans and Professors
Hence, the war in Gaza has changed the relationships between Israeli secular and religious. The Israeli strikes in Gaza were declared by the Geneva-based Euro-Mediterranean Human Rights Observatory, which published that these have destroyed the higher education infrastructures. Furthermore, It was calculated to be more than 200 million euros. It has killed at least three university presidents since October 7th, over 95 deans and professors, and forced around 88,000 students to suspend studies, joined by 555 other students deprived of travel abroad due to the violations.
Al-Isra University
In the first days of the invasion, the Israeli occupying forces converted some facilities in Gaza into barracks or prison cells before destroying them. The Al-Isra University, destroyed on the 17th of this month during bombardment, belongs to this group, images of which were shared on social networks. The management of the center affirms that, before the detonation, troops took ancient artifacts from the national museum installed in one of the wings of the institution.
This is what October 7th did. What if that hadn't happened, too? Also, its main campus is located in Gaza City, and one of its branch campuses is in the Maghazi area; all three of these facilities were bombed in three successive air strikes on October 11th, 4th, and 21st of November 2023. Before October 7th, Karam Jad Allah had just turned 22 and was a student majoring in French and English literature at Al-Azhar University. He intended to apply for a Master's degree in Law to a university in Brussels.
"We had top-level professors," said the young man, now a refugee in Rafah, where he distributes food for a charitable organization in the area. "Millions of dollars were invested in recent buildings in my university. There were a lot of trees. We used to have top-line professors. Sometimes after losing something, you come to realize how valuable it was."
Differently, Zuheer Khaleel - the founder and first president of the Palestine University who fled from the sector to Egypt in November thanks to his British citizenship, repeats: "This senseless bloody war. " it is noteworthy to mention that Zaheer is a civil engineering doctor from a British university who went in 1989 to give his lectures in Gaza. He had seen many other wars shake the coastal region, but the scale of the current war greatly worried him about the future.
Khaleel told University World News: "What is happening in Gaza is a war on education. We built the academic infrastructure with our sweat, blood, and thanks to donations. It took us a long time to prepare the labs at our university since the equipment had to pass through Israeli customs. We have not completed our work to repair the damage from the previous war, in 2014. How long shall it take this time to rebuild everything?"
Among the most prestigious universities in the sector, the newspaper notes, was the Islamic University in Gaza, where, 68 years old, and a teacher in English literature, worked Akram Habib. The professor, who left for Turkey, says, "We created an elite in Gaza. My former students became ambassadors, lawyers, engineers, police officers, and teachers. And today, many of them have been killed."
Can the Israeli assassination campaign against Hamas have unexpected outcomes? The newspaper noted that "the college was a stronghold of pro-Hamas activities as the place where most of the executive directors of the movement studied, was bombed on October 11th, 2023." Habib responds to this, saying, "The Israelis say Hamas founded it, which is not true. But if this is true then why were other universities targeted in that manner? Why do we see Israeli soldiers photographed in front of its destroyed facilities? We can only think that this war has only one goal: to turn Gaza into an uninhabitable area."
