A New Academic Year: Education As Gaza’s Enduring Act of Survival
This article is part of Our Universities Live On, a monthly series of stories of resilience, leadership, and vision from Palestinian university leaders, faculty, and students who continue to teach, learn, and inspire – ensuring that higher education in Palestine not only endures, but continues to embody the spirit of a people determined to live and learn in freedom.
This month, we share four powerful testimonials from students in Gaza as the new academic year begins, universities reopen admission for nearly 56,000 Tawjihi graduates, and a brief return to physical academic spaces sparks hope for thousands of others.
For two years, Gaza has endured a relentless campaign of scholasticide: a systematic assault on every pillar of its educational life. Universities have been reduced to rubble, libraries and laboratories burned, campuses turned into military bases, and hundreds of academics and students killed. Education was not collateral damage; it was a deliberate target. Yet against every effort to extinguish their future, Gaza’s students, educators, and institutions continue to resist.
The future of higher education in Gaza remains under threat, despite the ceasefire declared earlier last month. In the weeks following the ceasefire agreement, the Israeli military has committed nearly 400 violations, killing hundreds, while maintaining severe restrictions on the movement of aid, vital medical supplies and equipment into Gaza. Some university buildings still standing continue to function as shelters for thousands of displaced people, and without access to essential materials, rebuilding cannot begin.
Yet amid the devastation, some hope has emerged as students and staff have returned, in part, to shared academic spaces for the first time since 2023. University faculty and staff in Gaza are working tirelessly to restore elements of their educational infrastructure after nearly two years of online learning under extraordinarily limited conditions. What remains are fragments of what once stood: repurposed buildings, makeshift tents, and partially restored campuses now serving as registration halls, graduation venues, and classrooms. Amid loss and destruction, Gaza’s academic community is piecing its future back together, carving a path wherever the possibility still exists.
A New Generation Steps Forward
For the first time in two years, university admissions in Gaza have reopened. The new academic year welcomes the 2023/24 “Phoenix Cohort,” 26,000 students from Gaza who successfully completed Palestine’s national secondary school examination, Tawjihi, with their results announced on 14 October. They are joined by 31,000 graduates from the 2024/25 cohort, whose results were announced on 13 November. Together, 56,000 young people are now eligible to enrol, keeping makeshift admission desks across Gaza crowded with students who overcame the most extreme conditions simply to study and sit their exams.
We pulled life from the mouth of death and created hope out of pain.
Among those students is Nesma Al-Nabih, who achieved an extraordinary 99.4% in Tawjihi exams. She describes a catastrophic experience living through the genocide: constant displacement between shelters, homes, hospitals, and damaged buildings; studying at night under a weak flashlight with no internet; attending a makeshift school to complete the entire curriculum in less than two months instead of the usual nine months. “We pulled life from the mouth of death and created hope out of pain,” she recalls. For her, education is the only tool to lift herself from the hopelessness of the rubble and reach a sense of freedom and self-determination. Even during famine, Nesma says that her family would go without food to make sure some sustenance was available for her in order to study. She now aspires to join the Faculty of Medicine at the Islamic University of Gaza to help rebuild the health sector and serve her people.
Graduations Against All Odds
This resilience is embodied in Gaza’s new medical graduates. Last month, the Islamic University of Gaza held a graduation ceremony honoring 113 new doctors who endured the loss of loved ones, homes, and stability. Throughout the genocide, they stepped into frontline roles in hospitals, emergency wards, and makeshift clinics, often performing duties far beyond their years. They provided essential medical services, supported overstretched teams, and helped hold the health sector together as medical infrastructure was systematically targeted.
Graduation day was the joy of a lifetime. It represented pride, gratitude, and survival. It is how we tell our story.
Among them was Dr. Adnan Skaik, who completed his final two years of medical school during the genocide. “Because so many health workers were killed, medical students took on a huge role. We volunteered across all hospitals, providing critical services and supporting teams in their moment of greatest need.” Reflecting on his graduation, he added: “Graduation day was the joy of a lifetime. It represented pride, gratitude, and survival. It is how we tell our story.”
Shaimaa Abughadyeen, an English literature graduate of Al-Aqsa University, completed her degree with distinction as part of the first graduating cohort in two years. Her home was bombed during her final exams, and she lost her eldest brother, yet she insisted on finishing her studies. “Education wasn’t a choice; it was hope and life.” She is now pursuing a diploma in educational training at Al-Aqsa University, determined to help rebuild Gaza’s education system. After the announcement of the ceasefire agreement in October, she finally witnessed scenes she had long imagined: students returning to partially standing campuses, a handful of buildings slowly being restored, and academic life tentatively resuming. But the destruction remains immense, and most university grounds now serve as the only shelters for thousands of displaced families. Online learning continues to be the primary mode of teaching, with electricity, internet access, and digital infrastructure barely functioning, and universities still barred from fully rebuilding their facilities.
Education as an Assertion of Existence
For many students, education is not only a degree but a lifeline and a form of resistance. Maya Humaid, a recent graduate in Mobile Computing and Smart Device Applications from the Islamic University of Gaza, explains: “Education was my only link to the future, and the one part of my life I could still control amid all the destruction.” Studying under bombardment, in displacement tents, or by candlelight, she and thousands like her refused to let scholasticide sever their future. Education, she says, is a step toward safeguarding an entire generation living without the basic necessities of life. “It was the only thing that gave us a sense of direction.” Learning became a way of refusing the idea that war could freeze their lives or strip them of their rights.
A Call to the Global Academic Community
The academic community in Gaza has appealed to its international colleagues for urgent and concrete support. In a unified statement published on 27 June 2025, the presidents of Al-Aqsa University, Al-Azhar University – Gaza, and the Islamic University of Gaza emphasised that “the time for symbolic solidarity has passed” and called for “practical, structured, and enduring partnership” to ensure that Gaza’s universities live on and remain a part of our collective future. They outlined the immediate needs of students and faculty: tuition assistance, safe study spaces with reliable electricity and internet, research partnerships, replacement devices, and funding to rebuild destroyed campuses. Supporting Gaza’s universities, they stressed, is not charity; it is vital to safeguarding the future of an entire generation.
Gaza can rise through its people, but we need the global academic community to stand with us.
“My message to the global academic community,” Maya says, “is to recognise the scale of the challenges facing Gaza’s students and universities, and to become genuine partners in protecting the right to education.” Practical solidarity with Palestinian higher education institutions is critical. As Shaimaa emphasises, “Gaza can rise through its people, but we need the global academic community to stand with us.”
Gaza’s academic community continues to study, teach, graduate, and rebuild – not in the absence of devastation, but in defiance of it. Each enrolment form submitted, lecture delivered, and graduation held amidst ruins has become an act of collective insistence that the future of Gaza’s education system will not be eliminated.
