College students on the Islamic College of Gaza have returned to in-person courses for the primary time in two years, navigating a campus remodeled right into a web site of mass displacement and utter devastation because of Israel’s genocidal war on the besieged Palestinian enclave.
This Gaza Metropolis college, which reopened following October’s ceasefire, now hosts about 500 displaced households sheltering inside buildings lowered to hole shells by Israel’s relentless assault.
Beneficial Tales
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Tents dot the grounds the place lecture halls as soon as stood, a stark illustration of Gaza’s twin crises of homelessness and academic collapse.
“We got here right here after being displaced from Jabalia as a result of we had nowhere else to go,” stated Atta Siam, a kind of in search of refuge on campus. “However this place is for training. It’s not meant to be a shelter – it’s a spot for our youngsters to check.”
The partial resumption of courses has rekindled hopes for hundreds of scholars, regardless of situations that bear little resemblance to a functioning college.
UNESCO estimates greater than 95 p.c of upper training campuses throughout Gaza have been severely broken or destroyed for the reason that conflict started in October 2023.
First-year medical pupil Youmna Albaba stated she had dreamed of attending a correctly geared up college.
“I would like a spot the place I can focus, that’s totally certified in each means,” she stated. “However I haven’t discovered what I imagined right here. Nonetheless, I’ve hope as a result of we’re constructing every little thing from scratch.”
![Buildings across Gaza have been destroyed by Israel's bombardment. [Al Jazeera]](https://www.aljazeera.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/12/Screenshot-2025-12-20-at-10.58.35-1766217530.png?w=770&resize=770%2C405&quality=80)
What human rights teams and United Nations consultants have termed “scholasticide” – the systematic obliteration of an training system – has left greater than 750,000 Palestinian college students with out education for 2 consecutive tutorial years, in keeping with the Gaza-based organisation Al Mezan Heart for Human Rights.
Latest figures paint a devastating image – 494 faculties and universities have been partially or fully destroyed, with 137 lowered to rubble. The toll consists of 12,800 college students killed, together with 760 academics and academic workers, and 150 teachers and researchers, Al Mezan reported in January.
Isra College, which had been Gaza’s final remaining functioning college, was demolished by Israeli forces in January 2024.
On the Islamic College, professors are improvising with no matter assets stay amid energy cuts, shortages of apparatus and insufficient studying environments. Dr Adel Awadallah described protecting uncovered partitions with plastic sheets to accommodate as many college students as attainable. “We’ve borrowed motors to generate electrical energy to function the college tools,” he stated.
With solely 4 lecture rooms operational, hundreds of scholars are relying on these makeshift preparations to proceed their training.
UN consultants warned in April 2024 that the size of destruction could represent a deliberate effort to dismantle Palestinian society’s foundations.
“When faculties are destroyed, so too are hopes and desires,” their assertion learn, calling the sample of assaults systematic violence in opposition to instructional infrastructure.
The challenges lengthen past bodily destruction. Households struggling to safe meals, water and drugs discover supporting youngsters’s training almost not possible.
Distant studying initiatives by the Ministry of Schooling and UNRWA have been undermined by electrical energy blackouts, web outages and ongoing displacement.
But college students persist. Regardless of the trauma of greater than two years of Israeli bombardment and the lack of members of the family, they’ve persistently recognized returning to highschool as a prime precedence, an opportunity to reclaim normalcy and their futures.
As Youmna Albaba, the medical pupil, put it, “Regardless of all this, I’m completely satisfied as a result of I attend lectures in individual. We’re constructing every little thing from scratch.”
