Emergency Education Efforts Threatened by Israeli Restrictions
By Charlie Jaay
Jan/Feb 25
Education is a fundamental human right according to the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, yet Israel’s occupying forces have, in one year, damaged or destroyed over 90% of Gaza’s schools and all its universities. In addition, Gaza’s Ministry of Education says that 11,852 students have been killed and 18,959 injured since the beginning of Israel’s invasion of Gaza following Oct. 7 2024. Additionally, more than 560 teachers and administrators have been killed and an additional 3,729 have been injured throughout Palestine during this period. 362 government schools, universities and their buildings, and 65 affiliated with UNRWA have been bombed and/or vandalized in Gaza. This systemic and widespread destruction and the arrest, detention or killing of teachers, students and staff, has led UN experts to ask that Israel’s comprehensive destruction of the Palestinian education system be labeled as “scholasticide”. There is also evidence to suggest this is part of a wider campaign to make Gaza uninhabitable and to erase Palestinian life from the region.
Learning has been severely disrupted for all of Gaza’s 625,000 school-aged children, and the lives and livelihoods of its almost 23,000 teachers have been hugely impacted. As of January 2025, More than 70,000 tons of bombs have been dropped, turning Gaza into a vast wasteland of rubble. Massacres have become the norm, with entire families wiped off the civil registry. At least 16,500 of the over 42,500 people killed have been children, leading the UN to declare Gaza as the most dangerous place in the world to be a child. The U.N. Conference on Trade and Development said in a report released Oct. 21, 2024, that if the war ends tomorrow and Gaza returns to the status quo before Hamas’ Oct. 7, 2023, attack on Israel, it could take 350 years for its battered economy to return to its precarious prewar level.
A new report from the University of Cambridge and the Centre for Lebanese Studies in partnership with the UNRWA is the first to quantify the toll Israel’s genocide in Gaza has had on children, young people and teachers, and includes many interviews with vital actors in the field.
Learning Loss Has Accumulated in Gaza
Researchers of that report found that between 2019 and August 2024, schoolchildren in Gaza had already lost the equivalent of two academic years because of Covid-19 and Israel’s 2021 bombing campaign. As a result, a “learning poverty,” the proportion of children unable to read a basic text by age 10, has increased by at least 20%.
“We have accumulated a loss of learning. That which accumulated before the war, and another new loss that is happening now. The younger you are the more difficult it is to make it up. If this is prolonged – and we are moving into a protracted conflict – we are basically saying that a whole generation will be uneducated. It is not known when children will go back to school,” said Professor Maha Shuayb, director of the Centre for Lebanese Studies.
Shuayb is worried the daily attacks on Gaza’s schools will now spread to Lebanon and prevent children there from attending school. “That’s my worst nightmare, but that’s what happens when no one makes sure international law is protected. Schools have been systematically attacked, and huge numbers of children systematically killed or disabled, yet we seem unable to do anything. We are facing a really, really serious issue,” she added.
If Israel’s war on Gaza continues until 2026, the report suggests students would lose five years of education, and this is without taking into account the additional effects of mass displacement, hunger, disease, and trauma which are affecting the vast majority of the population. Life is being decimated in Gaza. Children have witnessed horrific things, which have left them with deep scars, and they are losing so much in terms of hope, a future, and human rights. This will change the way they see the world.
Gaza – A Child’s Mental Health Crisis in the Making
“Teachers told us of the difficulties they face when trying to educate their students about democracy, human rights, and international conventions in law, when all they see on a daily basis is that they are being abandoned,” said Yusuf Sayed, Professor of Education at the University of Cambridge.
The international community has failed Gaza’s children. More than 19,000 are orphaned, and many thousands have life changing injuries. Even before the events of Oct. 7, 98,000 children already had a disability. Their challenges have now worsened due to inaccessible shelters, lack of essential services and loss of assistive devices, which are now entirely unavailable, as Israel prevented their entry into the Strip. Before Israel’s latest military offensive, more than 500,000 children were already in need of Mental Health and Psychosocial support in the Gaza Strip. Today, the figure is one million.
“Adults and children alike have undergone tremendous shock and suffering, with physical and mental scars that are shaping their world view and threatening their faith in any future, let alone in human rights,” said UNRWA Spokesperson Jonathan Fowler. “The consequences of constant military operations and forced displacement are taking a heavy toll on people’s mental health, and have exacerbated a preexisting mental health crisis, which was conditioned by years of blockade and recurrent hostilities. UNRWA social workers report a surge in symptoms of depression, stress, anxiety, and trauma among the people they serve – one that is especially noticeable among children, who have been bearing the brunt of this brutal war. In Gaza, every second person is a child. So, this is a children’s mental health crisis.”
Education Brings Hope to Gaza’s Children
Palestine has one of the world’s highest literacy rates, and Palestinians invest a huge amount in education as it provides their young people with the skills and knowledge needed to advocate for their rights, and contribute to their communities, and gives them hope. It also helps preserve Palestinian history, culture, and identity, and is a source of pride and identity for the population.
Some may see education as a luxury, especially when people are dying from hunger, and essential food and medical aid is blocked from entering Gaza. But the report reminds us that education offers much more than just academic achievement for these children. Children in Gaza have just been surviving – nothing more. There is a real need for some normalcy, a future vision and, in this respect, education is extremely important.
School buildings that have not been destroyed have been repurposed as emergency shelters for some of Gaza’s 1.9 million internally displaced people, but these are extremely overcrowded and lack basic resources. They too have become the targets of Israeli attacks even though, under international humanitarian law, schools are protected during conflict.
Salem Abu Musleh, Ph.D. works for the Ministry of Education and Higher Education and is the Gaza coordinator of the Palestine Astrophysics Program. He and his family have been displaced several times due to the bombing and have been forced to travel backwards and forwards between Khan Younis and Rafah, looking for a safe place to stay. His son had been offered a scholarship to study in Turkey but has been unable to take up the offer, due to the border closure. Abu Musleh is now in Khan Younis teaching 14- to 18-year-olds. He says his classes – which take place either outside, in good weather, or in a tent that has been converted into a classroom – aim to not only increase his pupil’s knowledge, but also help with their psychological rehabilitation.
“We use astrophysics to help our students express their feelings,” he said. “By teaching them about the sky, the stars and the galaxies, we try and give these girls and boys hope, and show them they can do, they can learn, and they can continue their lives, in spite of the war and the bad situation here in Gaza.”
Emergency Education Efforts Threatened by Restrictions Imposed by Israel
Although their rights are constantly violated, Palestinians are known for their resilience, and Israel’s attempts to erase them are constantly thwarted. Emergency education efforts are now on the rise all over Gaza. Small-scale initiatives, like Abu Musleh’s, aim to keep children learning and minimize the impacts of the genocide on their mental health. Temporary Learning Spaces provided by the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs provide over 30,000 school-aged children with mental health support and essential literacy and numeracy skills. In August, UNRWA also began its “back to learning” program, which includes games, drama, arts, music and sports activities to try to the war’s impact on children’s mental health.
But these emergency education efforts also face serious problems. They are not only threatened by ongoing Israeli violations, but also by the weather. Current restrictions on the entry of waterproof tents, and similar materials, mean that many are expected to face flooding without proper protection rendering makeshift schools inaccessible due to heavy rains during winter.
“Now we are looking for plastic to cover some of the places, to protect our students from rain. We face such a great problem. There are no materials here, no plastic comes here. We have found some old plastic, but it’s not enough to cover the main area, so the problem still exists,” said Abu Musleh.
Although the report focuses on schools, school-aged children and young people, university students have also suffered greatly. Sixth year medical student, Mohammed Al Zebda attended Gaza’s Al- Azhar University but, like many, was unable to take his final exams and graduate this year because Israel bombed his university. His educational journey took a drastic turn for the worst.
No Safe Place in Gaza
“As a student, my primary focus shifted to finding a safe place for me and my mother, and ensuring we had enough food, water and other necessities. It was nearly impossible to think about education while the Israeli army was bombing everywhere, and there was no safe place in Gaza,” Al Zebda.
He used to live in a beautiful area near to Al Shifa Hospital in Central Gaza but was displaced from his home within the first week of Israel’s bombing campaign.
“We took only the most necessary things – passport, essential papers, laptop, phone and some clothes. I remember each of my family members carrying a bag filled with clothes and important documents, nothing more,” he said. “Every previous war had lasted only one or two months, but we soon found this war was far more aggressive and unimaginable. My family and I were displaced four times, and this was an extremely tiring and stressful situation. During this time, I wished I could die, and my family and I witnessed death multiple times.”
In August 2023, he traveled to London to take part in a plastic surgery course in an effort to help the injured, and put his new skills to good use. For five months, Al Zebda assisted in a hospital emergency room and burns department.
“I saw and witnessed massacres right before my eyes; children without hands, without ears, and without legs, dead people, and injuries I had never studied before. I encountered difficult cases, including children with burned-out skulls, with their brains exposed outside their skulls,” he said.
In May, after waiting a month for his name to be called out, and paying $5000, Al Zebda managed to leave Gaza for Egypt, where he is now continuing his studies and working with Children Not Numbers to help injured children travel outside Gaza to receive treatment. He said that he is very grateful to this NGO for supporting his education, and now feels safe although he was “forced to start from zero.”
Immense Suffering of Faculty Staff and Students
Dr. Mohamed Riyad Zughbur, has been dean of the Palestine Faculty of Medicine at Al Azhar University for the past five years, and is one of Al Zebda’s lecturers. His home was blasted at the start of Israel’s bombing and he was displaced many times before reaching the safety of Egypt where he now resides. While recounting the university’s destruction, and the many deaths of faculty students and staff, Zughbur said he feels “indescribable sadness and pain.” Two of hi relatives attended the university but lost their lives when they were bombed by F-16 aircraft. Ten months later, their bodies were pulled out from the rubble.
“Some students are the last in their family to be killed by Israel, and that family is then permanently removed from the civil registry,” he said. “And there are students whose family members have all been killed, and they remain alive alone, struggling to survive. And there are students in the Faculty of Medicine who had limbs amputated after the bombing.’’
Al-Azhar’s Faculty of Medicine, which was established in 1999, was the first medical faculty in the Gaza Strip. Last year, Israeli forces bombed the building, destroying Zughbur’s dream of further developing the facility. “It is now 75% destroyed, and the infrastructure including sewage, communications and electricity, like everywhere else in Gaza, is no longer functioning,” he said. “After it was bombed, the Israeli army came in and destroyed laboratories and university archives, bulldozed lecture halls and looted the new laboratories.”
The university resumed clinical training in late April, and an e-learning platform has been available for the rest of the university since June. Lectures are either through Zoom meetings or recorded and uploaded for students. However, there are still huge problems to face, with many faculty members struggling to protect their families and often not having enough food and water. Most are living in tents, so also struggle to charge their mobiles and phones, and lack internet.
But Zughbur said that despite the bombing, killing, and forced displacement, those students who have stayed in Gaza are committed to their training and are continuing their studies despite all the difficulties in their daily lives. No doubt, these students will play an important part in helping to rebuild Gaza’s health system when rebuilding starts, yet again.
Educational Resources in Short Supply, Even Before Oct. 7
Dr. Mohammed Albaba is the dean of Al-Azhar University’s Faculty of Dentistry, and the only staff member from his faculty who is still in Gaza. The others have left to safer places such as Egypt.
Since withdrawing its forces from Gaza in 2005, Israel has carried out five bombing campaigns there, and continues its 17-year land, sea and air blockade, heavily restricting many imports and virtually all exports, further isolating the strip. As a result, there is a complete lack of educational resources including books, pens, and paper. This problem has been exacerbated since Oct. 7.
“In terms of education, the blockade really affects our faculty’s improvement, and therefore our education level in Gaza,” said Albaba. “If I want some equipment for our university, it may take months or even years to get them here, if it arrives at all. But the blockade doesn’t just include equipment and goods, but also people. We faced, and continue to face, a real problem in travelling. For example, if there is a dental conference abroad, this would be impossible to go to.”
There are two options for those wanting to leave Gaza – either to cross the border with Israel, which is almost impossible for Palestinians, or to cross by the Rafah Crossing, the border with Egypt. Even before Israel’s latest military attack, those crossing the Egyptian border had to pay the authorities thousands of dollars, but Albaba says this cost has now risen sharply.
Cost of Living Crisis has Led to a Staff Shortage
“The cost of crossing the border has now tripled since the start of the war,” Albaba said. “This is a total mess, and it’s impossible to improve anything. It does not only affect education. Many patients from Gaza face death, as they cannot afford to cross the border to seek medical treatment. Considering the situation people face, it’s also impossible for many of them to afford to leave Gaza, if they wanted to.”
This latest Israeli aggression has changed the lives of the people of Gaza beyond recognition, and they are exhausted. In common with Zughbur, Albaba has lost his home and has not been paid any wages but is continuing to volunteer as a Dean of the faculty because he is trying to help his students finish their education.
“The last time I was paid was two months ago,” he said. “The university hasn’t paid us any salary, because it has been destroyed. People have lost their lives, their homes, their money, so there is no income. But at the same time, we are trying to educate the students. Most of the University’s staff have now left Gaza, and are seeking jobs abroad, but we need staff, and they need financial support to continue their lives, and continue to work with their students.”
The huge financial problems have led to a staff shortage, so Albaba is looking for volunteer staff outside of Gaza, through Academic Solidarity With Palestine, a nonprofit which has proven invaluable to the many educational facilities in the region looking for volunteers at this difficult time. Al-Azhar used to be financed through student tuition fees, and some international support for the educational system, but this has all stopped. The university has been destroyed and the fees are not being paid. This is an extreme challenge as circumstances are especially difficult, and prices extremely high, while employees still need to support their families. But it is not only staff members who are suffering from financial hardship.
“Considering What Other People are Going Through, My Situation is Perfect!“
“Even if students have internet connections, many students don’t have the equipment. You at least need a laptop, but due to the financial problems people are facing they are now selling their laptops and their phones. They are even selling their clothes,” he said.
Lecturers and students alike are facing severe problems, not only with lack of internet, water and electricity, but also finding safe spaces to stay. Albaba has been displaced nine times since last October.
“You keep moving because you are running from the ground invasion, from place to place, looking for somewhere safe,” he said. “I have stayed with relatives, lived in a tent, rented a room for $500 a month which was not suitable for human beings, and now there are 10 of us, including my wife and son, staying in a store. This is my situation. It isn’t easy but considering what other people are going through, it’s perfect!”
Albaba considers himself lucky because he can, at the moment, cope with the financial problems he is facing, but says many other people unfortunately do not have this ability. Still, he is undecided about his future.
“This is my job. I want to stay in Gaza, but unfortunately after the war there will be nothing left here,” he said. “It’s a very difficult situation. I can’t explain in details what we are facing, but for now I am trying to do my best to help the students, as I am still in Gaza now although the other staff outside of Gaza are also supporting them.”
The future outcome of Gaza’s young people depends on when this war ends, and how quickly the education system is restored.
Lack of Funding for Education
Once this genocide ends, there will be significant challenges in resuming the educational process. A permanent ceasefire is essential as a first step to rebuilding the education system. The blockade also needs to be lifted and the occupation ended. But children and young people cannot wait. They need access to safe educational spaces and learning activities now, to ensure their wellbeing. For this to happen there also must be increased educational funding. But funding has not been forthcoming. Every year, since 2003, the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) has launched a humanitarian appeal to support the Occupied Palestinian Territory, but education continues to be one of the least funded sectors. In this year’s $3.42 billion flash appeal, education received only 3.5% of the appeal funding. The United Kingdom only gives just over 2% of the appeal funding for education, while major donors such as the U.S. and Germany have completely neglected education in their aid packages.
When people are focused on a dire situation with loss of life, they think of the immediate emergency context, and not about education. But the report argues that there should not be a choice between one or the other. There needs to be adequate funding for both. For 76 years and counting, the international community has turned its back on the Palestinians, and their children. They should be given more than just the bare minimum to live, and need a secure future, with equal rights.
Education is central to stabilizing the decline in Gaza, and Sayed is still hopeful that the challenges can be met. “Things are bad, but if and when we get a permanent ceasefire, and allow things to stabilize, there is a strong possibility that with time, commitment and reconstruction that has Palestinians at the heart of it, we might be able to make up for some of the learning loss,” he said.
[Editor’s Note: Republished with permission. An earlier version of this report was first published in UK publication The Canary on 8 October, 2024, https://www.thecanary.co/long-read/2024/10/08/israel-gaza-education/).