Dr. Refaat Alareer was a very good buddy of mine. A poet, author, and distinguished activist for the Palestinian trigger, Refaat taught English literature and poetry for a few years on the Islamic College of Gaza. He beloved the works of Shakespeare, Thomas White, John Donne, Wilfred Owen, and plenty of others, and he was the editor of two books: “Gaza Unsilenced“ and “Gaza Writes Back.”
Refaat is one among a minimum of 105 Palestinian teachers killed in Gaza for the reason that begin of Israel’s conflict, in line with the Palestinian Training Ministry’s latest statistics. His house establishment, the Islamic College, has been utterly demolished by the bombing marketing campaign — and all of Gaza’s 19 universities have sustained extreme injury or lie in utter ruins, with over 80 percent of college buildings destroyed. The Strip’s almost 90,000 college students who have been enrolled in establishments of upper studying earlier than the conflict have largely been unable to proceed their research.
The annihilation of upper training is especially tragic for Gaza’s future: this supply of studying, financial progress, livelihoods, and group is now gone. However the tales of the lecturers and faculties we now have misplaced, and the tutorial alternatives that at the moment are foreclosed, need to be advised.
Refaat understood the significance of training higher than most. He inspired me to study English for my work as a journalist, and he beloved educating me new phrases in each English and Arabic. “By way of storytelling,” he would remind me, “we affirm our proper to this land. And studying the English language is a way of breaking free from the extended siege of Gaza.”
Within the Israeli airstrike that took Refaat’s life on Dec. 7, his brother Salah and nephew Mohammad, in addition to his sister Asmaa and her three kids, Alaa, Yahya, and Muhammad, have been martyred alongside him, and different members of the family have been wounded. Three of Refaat’s sons — one among whom was in his first 12 months at college — and his three daughters stayed with their mom in one other shelter and survived.
Refaat Alareer. (Palestinian Info Middle)
Refaat’s cousin, Muhammad Alareer, mentioned that he believes the Israeli military focused Refaat exactly due to his scholarship and fluency in English — in addition to his work with the “We Are Not Numbers” venture, a Palestinian non-profit that Refaat co-founded in 2015. “Earlier than the assault,” Muhammad advised +972, “he acquired many dying threats on-line and through cell phone from Israeli accounts, demanding him to cease writing and publishing.”
In keeping with Muhammad, Refaat acquired a telephone name from somebody who recognized himself as an Israeli officer, saying that the navy knew precisely the place he was positioned, and that he can be assassinated or detained if he continued writing. This risk prompted Refaat to go away his spouse and kids on the UNRWA faculty in Al-Tuffah, northeast of Gaza Metropolis. He went to his sister’s home, pondering it will be safer than the varsity — however he was sadly mistaken.
‘He anticipated to be focused’
Among the many many Palestinian teachers killed in Gaza since Oct. 7 have been three college presidents. The 53-year-old physicist Dr. Sofyan Abdel Rahman Taya was serving because the president of the Islamic College of Gaza when he was killed in an Israeli airstrike on Jabalia on Dec. 2 alongside together with his spouse, dad and mom, and 5 kids.
+972 spoke to Dr. Taya’s brother Nabil, who described how a lot Sofyan beloved his work and cared deeply about his household and people round him. His analysis on optical waveguides and biosensors received him quite a few awards and honors, together with the Palestine Islamic Financial institution Award for Scientific Analysis, the Abdul Hameed Shoman Award for Younger Arab Scientists, and the Islamic College Award for Scientific Analysis. In March 2023, Dr. Taya was appointed because the UNESCO Chair for Physics, Astrophysics, and House Sciences in Palestine. As college president, he had a transparent objective: to pursue each scientific analysis and group service, because the cornerstones of the college’s mission.
Dr. Sofyan Abdel Rahman Taya. (Courtesy)
However within the weeks earlier than he was killed, Nabil advised +972, Sofyan “anticipated to be focused, particularly after many tutorial and administrative employees on the Islamic College have been assassinated earlier than him.” These included Omar Farwana, Dean of the College of Medication, and Dr. Muhammad Shabir, the previous president of the college. After Taya and Shabir, Dr. Mentioned Anwar Alzebda, of the College School of Utilized Sciences in Gaza, was the third college president killed together with a number of members of his household on Dec. 31.
Dr. Khitam Al-Wasifi, head of the Physics Division on the Islamic College and vice dean of its School of Science, was one other distinguished Palestinian tutorial who was killed alongside together with her husband — additionally a professor on the Islamic College — and kids on Dec. 1. Recognized by colleagues and pals because the “Sheikha of Physicists,” she printed dozens of articles on magnetoelectricity and optoelectronics, and was awarded a number of honors for her work.
Many surviving college members noticed the deaths of those teachers because the deliberate concentrating on of distinguished intellectuals in Gaza — and, because of this, many declined to be interviewed for this text, for worry of being assassinated themselves. By killing influential tutorial figures, in line with Salah Abd El Atei, the president of the Worldwide Fee to Assist Palestinian Rights (Hashd) who spoke to +972 from Cairo, Israel goals “to destroy all the things symbolic in Palestinian society in order that the folks in Gaza would not have figures they will depend on sooner or later.”
Campuses in break
On Oct. 11, Israel bombed the Islamic College of Gaza, razing your entire campus. Among the many demolished constructions was the college mosque, in contravention of worldwide legal guidelines prohibiting assaults on locations of worship. The college had been broken in earlier wars, however the scale of the present destruction is unprecedented.
View of the destruction at Al-Aqsa College, Gaza Metropolis, February 10, 2024 (Omar Elqataa)
U.N. consultants have estimated that 80 % of faculties and universities have been broken or destroyed since October — amounting, of their view, to “scholasticide.” “It could be cheap to ask,” the consultants wrote, “if there may be an intentional effort to comprehensively destroy the Palestinian training system.”
Al-Azhar College’s major campus in Gaza Metropolis and its department in Al-Mughraqa have been laid to waste by repeated Israeli airstrikes within the first few months of the conflict. Earlier than October, in line with Muhammad Al-Wazir, a professor on the college, the college was composed of 12 schools, collectively providing bachelor’s levels in 77 majors, 33 grasp’s packages, and 4 doctoral packages.
Just like the Islamic College, Al-Azhar was repeatedly focused throughout earlier escalations in Gaza. “Every time,” Al-Wazir advised +972, “the college promptly reached out to Arab, Islamic, and worldwide establishments to assist restore the injury.” After this conflict, nevertheless, the college will likely be compelled to rebuild from scratch. As Al-Wazir identified, the destruction of Al-Azhar College was one of many items of proof South Africa presented throughout its argument earlier than the Worldwide Courtroom of Justice as proof of Israel’s systematic and intentional destruction of academic infrastructure.
Israa College, the College of Palestine, Gaza College, Al-Quds Open College, and Al-Aqsa College — my alma mater — have all confronted comparable wreckage. So many employees members have been killed and just about all college students and staff displaced {that a} full account of the destruction is extraordinarily difficult. “It’s not potential to quantify the injury incurred by the college,” mentioned Dr. Imad Abu Kishek, the president of Al-Quds Open College. “Nor can we decide this case whereas we’re shedding the important factor, the human beings — teachers, technicians, employees, and college students — every day.”
Al-Quds Open College, November 25, 2023. (Omar Elqataa)
College infrastructure that benefited the Palestinian public has additionally been destroyed. Israa College was house to a nationwide museum, licensed by the Tourism and Antiquities Ministry — “the primary of its variety on the nationwide degree,” as Ahmed Juma’a, a lecturer on the college, defined to +972. “It housed over 3,000 artifacts. The occupation troopers and officers looted them earlier than blowing up the museum constructing.” There have additionally been multiple reports that Israeli troopers used Israa College as a makeshift navy base and detention heart, earlier than blowing up the remaining buildings in January.
It’s not solely college students and professors who bear the lack of Gaza’s universities, however all Palestinians in Gaza who’ve been disadvantaged of the advantages of a vibrant tutorial group — all the things from arts and tradition to medical care. Esraa Hammad was a dental scholar on the College of Palestine earlier than October 7. “I studied there for 5 years and was about to acquire my diploma,” she mentioned, “however all of that ended with a call from the occupation military.”
For Esraa, essentially the most significant a part of her research was her work with dental sufferers within the college’s clinics. “I felt pleased with my training and my professors, particularly when folks would come to thank me for relieving them from tooth ache and serving to them return to their regular lives free of charge.”
‘We insist on persevering with college students’ training’
Many see the destruction of educational life in Gaza as a part of Israel’s purpose to make sure that Palestinians don’t have any future within the Strip. In keeping with Abd El Atei, “The military has been searching for to destroy all facets of life within the Gaza Strip, making it uninhabitable and pushing its residents emigrate to European nations.”
For Dr. Ali Abu Saada, Director Basic of Greater Training at Gaza’s Training Ministry, the concentrating on of academic establishments is “a part of an effort to strip Palestinians of their important parts of life: thought, tradition, and training.” Though college constructions could also be rebuilt after the conflict, Abu Saada believes Israel intends to ship the message that Palestinians will face a future with “no place for training and no lecturers to show — a actuality that helps speed up migration, which is what the occupier seeks.”
Islamic College of Gaza, Gaza Metropolis, February 15, 2024. (Omar Elqataa)
But regardless of the injury, there are nonetheless efforts amongst Palestinians in Gaza to proceed educating and studying. Al-Azhar College has issued an announcement calling on college students to proceed their semesters remotely. Al-Wazir, the Al-Azhar professor, mentioned this “is a strategy to problem the truth imposed by the Israeli military’s destruction of universities — in order that the educational 12 months doesn’t go to waste for college kids.”
Dr. Muhammad Hamdan, director of public relations at Al-Aqsa College, confirms that almost all universities within the Gaza Strip have returned to distance studying, “as a strategy to insist on persevering with college students’ training.” At Al-Aqsa, most distant courses give attention to extra theoretical topics, for which there are lectures accessible on the college’s on-line academic platform. A number of lecturers exterior of Gaza, Hamdan notes, supervise this platform and maintain new distant lectures as mandatory.
Distance studying throughout conflict, nevertheless, can’t occur with consistency. Ayman Safi, a third-year scholar in Info Expertise at Al-Azhar, registered for on-line courses at his college as quickly as they turned accessible. However as he advised +972, downloading “tutorial supplies from the platform to the laptop computer or cell phone, together with textbooks, requires sturdy web,” and he’s compelled to journey greater than 4 kilometers to discover a enough connection.
“I attempt to examine throughout the night time,” Safi mentioned, as he prepares for his midterm exams, “as a result of throughout the day I’ve many different duties: offering water and firewood [for my family], charging the batteries for our telephones and laptops, and lighting a fireplace to arrange meals.” On class days, he wakes up early to take care of his household’s wants, earlier than touring to entry the web. However when he arrives, he admits, “I’ve a tough time following the lectures or the knowledge in my textbooks.” Regardless of this, he’s “attempting to complete this faculty 12 months in any approach potential.”
The School of Utilized Sciences at Al-Azhar College, Gaza Metropolis, February 15, 2024. (Omar Elqataa)
Universities in Gaza have made it simpler to cross-register between completely different establishments, which Majd Mahdi, a medical scholar on the Islamic College of Gaza, has taken benefit of. “I persevered in highschool with a purpose to examine medication, which was my dream,” she advised +972. After her college was destroyed, she was capable of enroll in courses at Cairo College in Egypt and An-Najah College in Nablus.
Universities within the West Financial institution corresponding to An-Najah, with assist from the Training Ministry, have opened their doorways to college students in Gaza who’re capable of study remotely, and tens of thousands enrolled for the spring and summer time semesters. However whereas their buildings are nonetheless standing, these establishments have confronted lockdowns and different disruptions since October 7, whereas the Israeli navy and settlers make it more and more troublesome for Palestinians within the West Financial institution to maneuver freely between their properties and college.
For Mahdi, persevering with her training from a tent in Al-Mawasi, west of Khan Younis, has proved almost unattainable. “We don’t have a supply of electrical energy,” she mentioned, “so each time my laptop computer runs out of battery, I’ve to go to one of many charging factors and it wants some time to cost.” Even when she is ready to resume learning, nevertheless, “it’s troublesome to observe all of the lectures and [communicate] with lecturers through WhatsApp, since there isn’t any fixed web connection.”
Mahdi hopes that this conflict will finish as quickly as potential and that she’s going to return to learning in particular person, even when it takes place in destroyed lecture rooms. “We’d like the assistance of docs, so I hope to complete my research and be a part of the hospital employees in order that I can help my folks.”
However the results of the conflict will likely be felt for years to return. In keeping with Dr. Wissam Amer, dean of the College of Communication and Languages at Gaza College, a complete era of scholars in any respect ranges of training have confronted important setbacks of their progress. “Rebuilding the training system in Gaza shouldn’t be unattainable,” he mentioned, “however it would take a very long time. The schools have been utterly destroyed.”
The IDF Spokesperson responded to our request for remark with the next assertion: “The IDF doesn’t intentionally goal academic establishments as such, however operates solely on navy necessity. Hamas systematically locations its operatives and navy property within the coronary heart of its civilian inhabitants, and conducts its fight from civilian infrastructure, together with academic establishments and universities. The Islamic College of Gaza constructing and its environment have been utilized by Hamas for numerous navy actions, above and under floor, this features a improvement and manufacturing of weapons and the coaching of the intelligence personnel within the navy department of Hamas.”
