Updates from Higher Education in Palestine: Escalating Assaults on Palestinian Universities and the Right to Learn
In recent weeks, higher education institutions across Palestine have faced intensified attacks. Universities, staff, students, and infrastructure continue to be targeted by Israeli military forces. The systematic destruction of these institutions and their ability to function has been described by UN experts as “scholasticide.”
On October 5, Israeli forces once again targeted Al-Azhar University in the Al-Mughraqa area of southern Gaza City. The bombardment struck the Faculties of Agriculture and Veterinary Medicine and the Faculty of Law at the new campus in central Gaza. With these strikes, no buildings remain intact at the new Al-Mughraqa campus. The main university campus in Gaza City has also sustained severe damage, rendering it unusable and unsafe for human access. It is now classified as a high-risk area, and its current condition remains unknown due to ongoing military activity and restricted access.
According to Euro-Med Human Rights Monitor, the main headquarters of Al-Azhar University in Gaza City and its branch in Al-Mughraqa had already been targeted and destroyed during earlier Israeli airstrikes on October 11, November 4, and November 21, 2023. While the most recent assault was primarily carried out through artillery fire, observers warn that the site remains in imminent danger of total destruction, as has occurred with numerous other civilian buildings in recent days.
In its June 2025 report, the UN Commission of Inquiry noted that the Israeli army has seized and used educational facilities as military bases and staging grounds for military operations, including transforming part of Al-Azhar University’s Al-Mughraqa campus into a synagogue for troops.
Just weeks earlier, on September 14, Israeli airstrikes struck the remaining structures of the Al-Madina Al-Munawara campus of the Islamic University of Gaza in Tel Al-Hawa. Displaced families were taking refuge on the site at the time of the third strike, resulting in fatalities and injuries. These repeated assaults have erased much of Gaza’s higher education landscape, leaving thousands of students without classrooms or access to learning.
Attacks have also intensified across the occupied West Bank. On the same day as the strike on Gaza’s Islamic University, Israeli forces stormed the campuses of Palestine Polytechnic University and Hebron University in Hebron. Several students and academic staff were detained following identity checks and patrols on university grounds, according to reports from the WAFA News Agency. These incidents reflect an alarming pattern of raids on educational spaces, spreading fear and disrupting academic life.
In Tulkarem, Palestine Technical University – Kadoorie was invaded by Israeli forces on September 11 and turned into a temporary military base and detention site. Witnesses described how as many as 1,000 people were held within a 24-hour period before many were released. Local reports, cited by Al Jazeera, indicate that classrooms and facilities were damaged and that the site was used for large-scale detentions—another example of how spaces of learning have been systematically transformed into instruments of military control.
At midnight on September 22, 2025, Israeli forces raided Birzeit University for the 24th time since 2002, and the fifth time since October 2023. Guards were assaulted and multiple faculties and student spaces were stormed. The raid came as the university community was concluding the summer semester and preparing for the fall term, underscoring the ongoing harassment and obstruction faced by Palestinian students and educators.
These repeated attacks on universities are not isolated incidents, but part of a broader and deliberate campaign against the Palestinian right to education. On September 15, the UN Commission of Inquiry confirmed that Israel has committed—and continues to commit—genocide against the Palestinian people in the Gaza Strip. The report stated:
“Educational facilities in Gaza are not mere structures at which Palestinians receive education… By destroying the education system, which would cripple Palestinians’ ability to preserve their identity as a people, Israeli authorities deliberately inflicted conditions calculated to bring about the physical destruction of the group.”
The pattern emerging across Gaza and the West Bank paints a devastating picture of the scale of the crisis facing higher education in Palestine. Universities have long been spaces of intellectual freedom, cultural identity, and collective resilience. Today, they stand as symbols of defiance – a testament to a people’s determination to learn, to teach, and to exist in the face of scholasticide.
