This was supposed to be Yasser al-Ostaz’s final year at Al-Azhar University in Gaza City before graduating as an engineer. But on October 7, exactly a week after classes started in 2023, his hopes of completing his degree were shattered.
Al-Ostaz, from north Gaza, is now living in a tent in the small town of Rafah, at the southernmost end of the territory, where more than a million people threatened with famine have crammed in to seek refuge from the military offensive Israel is waging against the militant group Hamas.
For the 2.3mn Gazans trapped in the enclave devastated by five months of Israeli bombardment, survival is the immediate concern. But many are deeply anxious about their fates after the bombs stop falling. “There is nothing left after our homes and universities have been destroyed,” says al-Ostaz. “I think of leaving, but I haven’t got the slightest idea what to do.”
There are “a million questions” for which he has no answers buzzing around in his head: “Will the years I have spent at university count anywhere else — or will I have to start from scratch? Will I be able to travel? Could I scrape together the money to go?”
Before the war, there were over 800 schools in Gaza and 17 higher education institutions, including six universities, but many of these have been damaged or completely destroyed.
Al-Azhar, which al-Ostaz attended, was opened in 1991 by Yasser Arafat, and is considered one of Gaza’s more liberal universities for its curriculum and co-ed classes. But much of the university has been damaged by Israeli air strikes and a second campus in nearby Al-Mughraqa funded by Morocco and Saudi Arabia, is in ruins. What buildings are left house thousands of displaced people seeking shelter.
The tens of thousands of students like al-Ostaz, and the families of more than 600,000 children in the territory whose education has been cut short, have little realistic hope of schooling resuming any time soon.
For Gaza’s disproportionately young population — around 65 per cent are 24 or younger — returning to their lessons will be one of the biggest challenges they will face once the war has ended.
The repercussions for the future are severe. Academics warn the decimation of Gaza’s education system is a catastrophe that will further wreck Palestinian lives. Not only has Israel’s offensive flattened hundreds of schools and universities, it has also killed many educated Gazans, including students, young professionals, cultural figures, teachers and university professors. The loss to Palestinian society is incalculable, some say.
“The social fabric of communities in Gaza and their ability to rebuild their lives has been dismantled,” says Ala Alazzeh, an anthropology professor at Birzeit University in the occupied West Bank.
“Look at the number of professors killed. Established scholarship has been destroyed. It will not be just a matter of rebuilding physical space, but also capacity and academic training. If we don’t use the word genocide, we can say ‘sociocide’ — the destruction of society.”
Palestinians across Gaza and the West Bank have long reported one of the highest literacy levels in the Arab world in spite of decades of occupation and a 17-year blockade of the strip.
Literacy levels stand at almost 98 per cent, according to the Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics in September 2023, similar to those in the wealthy Gulf states. Illiteracy fell from 13.9 per cent in 1997 to 2.2 per cent in 2023.
Education was among the first sectors handed over from Israeli to Palestinian administration in the 1994 Oslo Accords, and is highly prized in society.
Universities in Gaza offered degrees in a wide range of disciplines and many graduates, despite the restrictions, managed to complete masters and doctorates in the west and come back to work or teach, says Mukhaimer Abu Saada, professor of political science al Al-Azhar University.
“Historically, Palestinians have invested heavily in educating their children,” he adds. “High unemployment in the last 17 years since Hamas took over control in Gaza has discouraged some young men from pursuing university degrees. But for women who wanted to change their lives, that was the only route.”
But this progress is now in jeopardy. Beyond the damage to infrastructure, the loss of life has further impoverished Gazan society by depriving it of the contributions of some of its most promising young members.
Maisara Alrayyes was killed by an Israeli air strike along with his parents and other relatives on November 6
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Tariq Thabet and more than a dozen of his family members were killed in an Israeli air strike on their home in central Gaza City on October 29
These include people like 28-year-old Maisara Alrayyes, a young doctor who completed an MSc at King’s College London funded by the prestigious UK Chevening scholarship.
He could have secured a well-paying job in the Gulf or Europe but instead he chose to return to Gaza where he worked for Médecins Du Monde, an international charity. “He was hardworking, very precise, very reliable, always kind and with a great sense of humour,” says Mads Gilbert, a professor of emergency medicine, who taught Alrayyes at Al-Azhar University and later became a friend.
The pair launched a project to train medical students to deliver life-saving first aid courses to ordinary citizens. On November 6, Alrayyes was killed by an Israeli air strike along with his parents and other relatives.
Similarly, project management specialist Tariq Thabet, who was in his late thirties, eschewed a life outside of Gaza to make a difference in his homeland. Thabet, who won a Fulbright scholarship in 2021, called the opportunity to study economic development at Michigan State University “a life-changing voyage”.
When he returned home in 2022, he devoted himself to Gaza’s young entrepreneurs, directing the business incubator at the University College of Applied Sciences. His friends estimate that Thabet helped thousands of young people find jobs — a lifeline for youth in the strip, where unemployment runs at around 70 per cent. Thabet and more than a dozen of his family members were killed in an Israeli air strike on their home in central Gaza City on October 29.
Then there is 14-year-old Lubna Alyaan, a talented violinist killed with dozens of her family members in an air strike on November 21 on her aunt’s house in Nuseirat, south of Gaza City. The schoolgirl, who attended the Edward Said National Conservatory of Music in Gaza, had impressed her teachers with her diligence and skill leading to lessons with global musicians such as Tom Suarez, a former member of the Baltimore and American symphony orchestras.
For Samar Ashour, a teacher and mother of three now displaced from Gaza City to Rafah “the future of a whole generation is at risk”.
She tries to revise lessons with her children, but says her youngest, a girl of six, has lost her previous enthusiasm for learning, still suffering from shock since a close friend was killed.
“She says, I don’t want to go to school or anywhere. I just want to stay with you so we die together when we are bombed,” Ashour adds.
Gaza’s education infrastructure was already under pressure before the war, according to a report from the Education Cluster, a grouping of UN and other aid organisations co-led by Unicef and Save the Children.
Schools were operating double shifts to meet demand, classrooms were crowded and school hours had been curtailed. Witnessing the horrors of frequent conflicts had also taken a toll on the mental wellbeing of children with four out of five living with “depression, grief and fear” even before October 7, the report says.
But after Hamas militants staged a bloody rampage in southern Israel, killing 1,200 people and taking hundreds hostage, according to the government. The Jewish state retaliated with a ferocious military offensive, devastating the territory as it sought to eradicate the Islamist group. At least 31,000 have been killed in Gaza so far, says Palestinian health authorities.
The war put a halt to education in Gaza’s 813 schools which, because of double shifting, shared 563 school buildings. Around 76 per cent of school buildings have been damaged, many extensively, says the Education Cluster. On top of that, hundreds of schools are now housing displaced people who are likely to continue to shelter there even after a ceasefire, because their homes have been destroyed and they have nowhere to go.
“The education infrastructure will need to be rebuilt entirely. Education materials will need to be completely replaced,” says the Education Cluster, who estimates this will cost at least $855mn.
Another uncertainty is the fate of UNRWA, the biggest UN agency working in Gaza, which ran 183 schools serving some 300,000 students. The aid agency had its funding frozen by the US, UK and other countries after Israel alleged that a dozen of its 13,000 employees in Gaza had played a role in the October 7 attacks. UNRWA has sacked the staffers and the UN has launched an investigation into the claims.
The collapse of UNRWA would leave a giant hole in Gaza’s education system that would be difficult to fill, UN officials say.
Universities have also been the target of Israel’s bombardment. Five out of the main six universities in Gaza have been completely or partially destroyed. This include the total destruction of the Hamas-affiliated Islamic University of Gaza, one of the largest in the strip with some 20,000 students, which Israel alleged was a “central training centre” for Hamas engineers.
The university’s president Sofyan Taya, a scientist and prolific scholar in the field of optics, was also killed in air strikes alongside his wife and five children.
Israel says it is investigating the demolition of Israa University, south of Gaza City, which was blown up on January 17 by Israeli soldiers after using it as a base for 70 days. The independent, private, not-for-profit institution established in 2014 — whose motto was “change towards professionalism” — taught medicine, engineering, finance, law and the humanities to some 4,000 students.
Dramatic video footage, filmed by the soldiers, shows the moment the entire campus collapses in a thick cloud of smoke and dust.
Gaza is also mourning the deaths of some 95 academics and researchers, according to Palestinian officials, including 77 PhD holders and three heads of universities.
Neve Gordon, an Israeli professor who teaches international law and human rights at Queen Mary University in London, says the dismantling of Gaza’s education system will lead to the “de-development” of the territory — something he and other academics in the British Society for Middle Eastern Studies consider a deliberate Israeli policy. The Jewish state insists it only targets buildings connected to Hamas.
“The systematic nature of the attacks, the number of professors killed and schools damaged demonstrate intent,” says Gordon, who warns of a “brain drain due to destruction and death”.
While no one is sure of what the territory’s next chapter will entail — Israel says it intends to exercise direct security control — academics agree that an exodus of qualified people is likely.
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