Israel may set fire to Gaza’s schools, but the Palestinians will resist Israeli-Palestinian conflict

My school in the Khan Younis refugee camp was one of my favorite places. I had dedicated teachers and a deep love for learning, so much so that education became my life’s work. But apart from the joy of learning, the school was a place where we, Palestinians, could find a connection with those we could not easily meet: Palestinians from the occupied West Bank and Jerusalem, Palestinians of our history and Palestinian writers, poets and intellectuals who told in emigration our story. Education is how we weave the fabric of our nation.

Palestinians are known for having one of the highest literacy rates in the world. They are often called the best educated refugees in the world. Education is both a part of our national story and a methodology for its transmission.

The annual tawjihi (state high school exam) is a key moment in the Palestinian liberation calendar. Every year, the announcement of the tawjihi results triggers widespread celebrations that are broadcast across the country, showcasing and honoring the achievements of the best students. The moment of euphoria transcends individual success, serving as a collective validation of our students’ ability to persevere and perform despite the relentless challenges thrown at them.

In the summer of 2024, for the first time since 1967, there were no tawjiha exams in Gaza. There was no celebration.

Israel’s decimation of the education system in Gaza has caused immense pain and despair among hundreds of thousands of children and youth. Yet the desire for education is so persistent among Palestinians that even in the midst of genocide they do not stop trying to learn.

When I think of this indomitable spirit, I think of my cousin Jihan, a self-employed civil society worker with a master’s degree in diplomacy and international relations. She and her three daughters have been living in a tent in Al-Mawasi for the past 10 months. Her husband, a doctor, and their son were forcibly disappeared by the Israeli army in the first days of the genocide.

While living in squalid conditions in a displaced persons camp, she and her daughters decided to help students access education despite the unfolding calamity. With the help of a solar panel, they set up a small charging station and hotspot, where anyone can charge their device and use the internet in exchange for a small fee.

Two of their regular visitors are my husband’s relatives: Shahd, a multimedia student, and her brother Bilal, a medical student. They used to study at al-Azhar and Al-Aqsa universities, but the Israeli army destroyed both. Last year, they joined an online learning initiative launched by academic authorities in Gaza to enable 90,000 students to complete their higher education.

Shahd and Bilal told me they had to walk for hours to get to Jihan’s charging station so they could access the course notes. Every time they leave their tent on their journey, they hug their family tightly, knowing that they may not return. Their parents are worried, especially for Bilal, because young men are often the targets of drone attacks. To protect him, Shahd sometimes travels alone, carrying both her and her brother’s phones to charge and download courses.

The queues are long, with hundreds of young people queuing to get enough power to charge their laptops or phones. Internet signal is weak so downloads are slow. The whole process sometimes takes a whole day.

As the eldest daughter, Shahd dreams of graduating and making her parents proud by bringing a little light into their dark world. Her father was recently diagnosed with colon cancer, and the family now faces another level of fear and loss, given the collapse of the health care system and the genocide.

Shahd told me that she clings to the hope that, somehow, through the small victory of graduation, she could change this harsh reality. She is fully aware of the risks. “With every step, I wonder if I will be able to return. My dream is to finish my degree, graduate and find a job to help my family,” she told me.

“I have seen people burned, mutilated, vaporized and even left for stray animals to find. I have seen body parts hanging from power lines, on roofs, or being transported by carts pulled by animals or carried on shoulders. I pray I won’t die like this. I must die in one piece with my mother able to say goodbye to me and be buried with dignity,” she added.

Anywhere, mass murders of students and attacks on schools or universities are a tragedy. But in Palestine, where education is more than a right or a dream, such attacks also target our national identity.

Israel is well aware of this and destroying the education system in Gaza was part of its long-standing strategy to erase Palestinian identity, history and intellectual vitality.

My generation also experienced the Israeli attack on education, albeit much less lethal and destructive. From 1987 to 1993, during the first IntifadaIsrael imposed a blanket closure of all universities in Gaza and the West Bank as a form of collective punishment, depriving tens of thousands of students of their right to higher education. At the same time, the curfew of the Israeli army confined us to our homes every night, from 8 pm to 6 am. Israeli soldiers were ordered to shoot any violators. Schools were raided, attacked and closed for weeks or months.

Despite this violence and disruption, education became an act of resistance. Like 18,000 other tawjihi students in Gaza in 1989, I studied tirelessly. I got the high grades needed to get a prestigious degree, which usually meant medicine or engineering.

My family was overjoyed. To celebrate my achievement, my father prepared a large pot of tea, bought a box of Salvana sweets and rushed to the family diwan at Khan Younis Camp, where our family mukhtar served Arabic coffee. People also came to congratulate my mother at home. However, this fleeting joy quickly turned into despair. While the universities were closed, I was forced to wait for five long years, clinging to the dream of continuing my education.

Mahmoud Darwish was right: Palestinians are afflicted with an incurable disease called hope. And paradoxically, the very restrictions of the occupation during the first Intifada created fertile ground for activism, resistance and community work. In the absence of formal institutions, young people denied a university education joined educational committees formed by civil society throughout Palestine.

We turned homes, mosques and community halls into makeshift classrooms. We often had to climb walls and sneak through alleyways to get to the students without being discovered by the Israeli soldiers enforcing the curfew. Professors also resisted by opening their homes to students, risking arrest and imprisonment to ensure continued learning. Thousands enrolled, studied and even graduated under these painful conditions.

When the universities finally reopened in 1994, I was part of the first group to start studying, along with six of my siblings. It was a moment of triumph for my family, although it placed a heavy financial burden on my father, who had to pay school fees for many of us. The reopening of the university was not only the restoration of education, but the restoration of a vital part of Palestinian identity and resistance.

The term “scholasticide,” coined by Palestinian scholar Karma Nabulsi during the 2009 Gaza war, describes the reality we have faced for decades. Scholasticide is the intentional erasure of indigenous knowledge and cultural continuity. It is an attempt to break the ties between a nation and its collective intellectual and historical identity.

Today, the reality is even more difficult. All 12 universities in Gaza lie in ruins, and the smallest 88 percent of all schools in Gaza were damaged or destroyed.

The physical destruction of infrastructure runs parallel to efforts to erase the legitimacy of the institutions that provide education. In late October, Israel effectively banned UNRWA. Given that this UN agency runs 284 schools in Gaza and 96 in the West Bank and East Jerusalem, this ban deals another blow to Palestine’s intellectual future.

Yet, just as we resisted in the past, Palestinians in Gaza continue to resist this systematic erasure of their educational and cultural lifelines. Education is not just a means of survival – it is the fabric that binds our nation together, the bridge of our history and the foundation of our hope for liberation.

When I think about the massive destruction of the education system in Gaza and all those students who defy all odds to continue their studies, I am reminded of the lines of Enemy of the Sun, a 1970 poem by Samih al-Qasem, known as the “poet of the Palestinian resistance”.

“You can rob my heritage,
Burn my books, my poems,
Feed my meat to the dogs,

You can spread the web of terror
on the roofs of my village
About the enemy of the sun,

But I won’t compromise,
And to the last pulse in my veins,
I will resist.”

Palestinian students will continue this resistance by walking for hours every day to access their education. It is the spirit of people who refuse to be erased as individuals, as a nation, as a historical fact and as a future reality.

The views expressed in this article are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the editorial position of Al Jazeera.