Can higher education in Gaza survive Israel’s war on Hamas?

On 24 January the Hamas administration in Gaza reported that Israeli forces had shelled Al-Aqsa University, University College of Applied Sciences, Khaledia School, Al-Mawasi School, and Industry School in Khan Younis, according to an Anadolu Agency report.

The attacks came days after a video, widely circulated on social media, on 18 January showed that Israeli forces destroyed the main buildings of the Al-Israa University, south of Gaza City, with explosives in what appeared to be a controlled demolition.

The New York Times reported on 22 January that it had verified the video and that it showed the main building of Al-Israa University being blown up. Satellite imagery by Planet Labs showed that the building was destroyed sometime between 10 and 14 January.

Structures housing the graduate and undergraduate colleges, as well as a national museum which contained thousands of rare archaeological artefacts, were demolished, according to the university’s statement, WAFA reported.

Al-Israa University administration said in a statement on 21 January that Israeli forces had occupied the university building for 70 days, turning it into a military base, command post and “detention and interrogation” site, as well as a place to station snipers, before demolishing it.

On social media platform X (formerly known as Twitter), Balakrishnan Rajagopal, United Nations special rapporteur on the right to adequate housing for the period 2020-26, posted a video of the detonation of the university with the comment: “In Gaza, a new international crime – educaricide or the killing of learning – needs to be added to the list of crimes under international law, when schools and universities are systematically destroyed, resulting in generational damage to societies.”

Euro-Mediterranean Human Rights Monitor (Euro-Med Monitor), an independent human rights group chaired by United States-based Princeton University Emeritus Professor Richard Falk, alleged that Israel has “systematically destroyed every university in the Gaza Strip in stages over the course of the more than 100-day attack with the first stage included the bombing of the Islamic and Al-Azhar universities”.

“The other universities suffered similar assaults; some, like Al-Israa University in southern Gaza, were totally destroyed after initially being used as military barracks,” Euro-Med Monitor indicated.

The rights group pointed out that “destroying universities and killing academics and students will make it more difficult to resume university and academic life when the genocide ends”, saying “it may take years for studies to be resumed in an environment that has been completely destroyed”.

The Israeli forces also blew up the Al-Israa University’s training hospital – the only university hospital in the Gaza Strip and one of only two in Palestinian occupied territories – as well as buildings housing medical and engineering laboratories, nursing labs, media training studios, the law college’s court hall, and graduation halls, the university said.

It accused the Israeli forces of “barbaric aggression” and alleged that the targeting of educational institutions is a longstanding and systematic pattern that has persisted since the beginning of the ongoing Israeli “war of genocide”, the Palestinian Information Center reported.

“The Israeli occupiers, through these actions, aim to propagate a culture of ignorance, keeping our people away from the march of knowledge and civilisation, and forcibly displacing intellectuals beyond Palestine with the assistance of Western migration institutions,” said the university in the statement, WAFA reported.

According to the New York Times, the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) said both the demolition of the building and the approval process that led to it were “under review”.

The Times of Israel reported on 21 January that in response to a query on the matter, the IDF had agreed to investigate “the collapse of the building and the approval process for the explosion”.

It said the findings of its investigation would be presented to IDF Chief of Staff Lt General Herzi Halevi in the “coming days”.

According to the army’s initial probe, the university building and the surrounding area had been used by Hamas “for military activity against our forces”, the IDF added.

United States State Department spokesman Matthew Miller said that although he did not have enough information to comment further, he noted that Hamas regularly uses civilian infrastructure for military purposes, The Times of Israel reported.

When Israel attacked and destroyed the Islamic University of Gaza on 11 October, as reported by University World News (a report that was cited in South Africa’s case against Israel on genocide at the International Court of Justice), the IDF alleged in a statement that it had “struck an important Hamas operational, political and military centre in Gaza – the Islamic University”.

In an interview with independent US news platform NPR, Ahmed Alhussaina, vice president of Al-Israa University, who recently left Gaza for Cairo, said the university’s vision, since it was established in 2014, has been that poverty will not stand in the way of anybody who wants to get their college education.

“Sixty-five percent of the students were there, females. We just almost finished with a university hospital. It was built and next to it – also was destroyed. That’s the first university hospital will be in Gaza. And that was all gone, too.

“And we had a museum there. You know, we had almost 3,000 pieces of artefacts from all over Gaza. Some of them go back to [the] Roman Empire. And that was all gone.”

His home block in Gaza has been bombed, killing many of his relatives and in total he has lost 102 family members.

‘Gaza is not liveable anymore’

“We don’t know what to think, what to do anymore,” Alhussaina said. “Gaza is not liveable anymore.

“Like, 70% of the buildings are all rubble. The streets are rubble.

“When I just went from the north to the south walking, there were bodies on the street decomposed. The massive destruction is so enormous that you can’t even imagine,” he told NPR.

“We feel in despair.”

Following the demolition of Al-Israa University, Hamas said that the destruction of school and university buildings in the Gaza Strip “is a war crime and criminal behaviour aimed at destroying all components of human life...”. It said this was an attempt to “undermine the educational system and obliterate the deep-rooted national identity of our Palestinian people”, ABNA reported.

A ‘policy of destroying education’?

The Palestinian ministry of higher education and scientific research condemned the bombing of Al-Israa University in the Gaza Strip saying in a 19 January statement this “comes as a continuation of the destructive scene targeting higher education institutions”.

“This destruction is a clear violation of all international laws, charters and norms that guarantee the protection of educational institutions and preserve their sanctity,” the ministry said.

The ministry stressed the need for international humanitarian and human rights institutions to bear their responsibilities to press for an end to occupation, which targets the Palestinian people in general and “pursues a policy of destroying educational institutions”.

Palestinian news agency WAFA reported that the 12 higher education institutions in Gaza have been damaged or destroyed, completely disrupting university education, Al Jazeera reported on 24 January.

According to the Government Media Office in Gaza, in the first 100 days of the Israeli military assault on Gaza, the IDF destroyed “95 schools and universities completely and 295 schools and universities partially”.

Images of Israeli troops cheering as educational institutions were blown up have gone viral on social media, including one showing the complete demolition of a distinctive blue UN school in northern Gaza, the BBC has reported, noting that such incidents have led to accusations of “collective punishment” being implemented in retaliation for Hamas’s 7 October attacks on Israel.

South Africa filed a genocide case against Israel at the World Court on 29 December 2023 and urged the top UN court, the International Court of Justice (ICJ), to halt the Gaza war, presenting the case on 11 January 2024.

Several academic communities worldwide voiced support for South Africa’s case in a statement issued on 8 January.

The main focus of the South African case was on the grave impact of the military assault by land, sea and air, including one of the “heaviest conventional bombing campaigns” in the history of modern warfare, on the civilian population and civilian targets in Gaza and the risk of humanitarian catastrophe.

Under international law, to win the case South Africa would have to convince the judges that there is clear intent – usually requiring evidence of a plan – on the part of Israel to eliminate Palestinians as a national, racial or ethnic group.

Among the evidence presented of the impact on education, the document said on page 55: “Israel has left Gaza City’s main public library in ruins. It has damaged or destroyed countless bookshops, publishing houses, libraries and hundreds of educational facilities.

“Israel has targeted every one of Gaza’s four [sic] universities – including the Islamic University of Gaza, the oldest higher education institution in the territory, which has trained generations of doctors and engineers, amongst others – destroying campuses for the education of future generations of Palestinians in Gaza.

“Alongside so many others, Israel has killed leading Palestinian academics.”

These included:

• Professor Sufian Tayeh, the president of the Islamic University of Gaza – an award-winning physicist and UNESCO chair of astronomy, astrophysics and space sciences in Palestine – who died, alongside his family, in an airstrike.

• Dr Ahmed Hamdi Abo Absa, dean of the software engineering department at the University of Palestine, reportedly shot dead by Israeli soldiers as he walked away, having been released from three days of enforced disappearance.

• Professor Muhammad Eid Shabir, professor of immunology and virology, and former president of the Islamic University of Gaza.

• and Professor Refaat Alareer, poet and professor of comparative literature and creative writing at the Islamic University of Gaza, were both killed along with members of their families.

• Professor Alareer, a co-founder of ‘We are Not Numbers’, a Palestinian youth project seeking to tell the stories behind otherwise impersonal accounts of Palestinians – and Palestinian deaths – in the news.

According to the Euro-Med Monitor, 94 Palestinian academics and hundreds of university students have been killed.

Israel rejected the genocide charges saying the argument is baseless, that in its operations it abides by and respects international law and that it has a right to defend itself against violent attacks, such as occurred during the Hamas incursion on 7 October, when 1,200 people were killed and around 250 hostages were seized (and allegations of a pattern of sexual violence are currently being investigated).

It said it is fighting Hamas, not the Palestinian population, and called on the ICJ to dismiss the case as groundless.

On 26 January, the ICJ, in an interim finding, ruled that “at least some of the acts and omissions alleged by South Africa to have been committed by Israel in Gaza appear to be capable of falling within the provisions of the [Genocide] Convention”.

It ordered Israel to ensure its forces do not undertake any acts in Gaza that could fall under the Genocide Convention.

The ruling required Israel to prevent and punish any public incitements to commit genocide against Palestinians in Gaza and to preserve evidence related to any allegations of genocide there, Reuters reported.

The judges also voiced grave concern for the fate of the 136 hostages that have yet to be freed by Hamas – of whom only 108 are thought to be alive – and demanded their unconditional release. But they did not call for a ceasefire.

Currently there is no end in sight either for the Israeli hostages or for the humanitarian catastrophe affecting the civilian population of Gaza. Without a ceasefire and progress towards agreement on a lasting and just political settlement, there is little hope for the future for Gaza’s students and academics.

Gaza’s ministry of education announced on 16 January that 4,368 students had been killed while almost 8,000 have been injured since the start of Israeli aggression on the Gaza Strip on 7 October. The Palestinian health ministry said on 17 January that the overall death toll from Israeli attacks on the Gaza Strip had risen to 24,448.

According to ABNA, the Islamic University of Gaza was reported by Hamas to have been re-bombed on 18 January, the same day that Al-Israa University was demolished.

On 24 January – International Education Day, which this year had a theme of ‘learning for lasting peace’ – the UN said in a joint statement that learning had been “devastated” in the “catastrophic conditions” of war in the Gaza strip.

“Education is a fundamental human right and critical lifeline for the millions of children and young people affected by the war, and it must be sustained even throughout this crisis. Ending the conflict is imperative to enable Palestinian students and educators to begin to rebuild the foundations for a safe return to learning.”

But when asked by NPR how the destruction of universities will affect how young people in Gaza think, Al-Israa University’s Vice President Ahmed Alhussaina said: “This generation, let’s call it Z Generation, since 2000, they haven’t seen nothing but wars on Gaza. They were trying to live, trying to, you know, let things go. But God knows what their psychology is [now], their emotion. I think 99% of them need mental health therapy.”