This professor once taught at Al-Azhar University in Gazi. Returned to campus in ruins
Muhammad Juma Khattab passes through the line of cars, trucks and carts, waiting at the control point to enter the city of Gaza from Netzarim Horidor. The 80-year-old professor lightly leans on a walking stick with every step he has taken, and her shoes are worn out, but her face filled with determination to reach the destination.
The fighting in his face is running deep, proof of a long life he calls his “tragic journey”. Born in 1945, the professor saw many wars in this country, and between travel abroad for work and education, the changes she went through.
But today, dressed in a navy blue blezer, brown pants and a naval sweater, a pharmacy professor returns to a university where he taught before the war: Al-Azhar University.
“I came to see how they destroyed this region,” he says for the free video designer of the CBC Mohamed El Saife. He shows on a backpack, filled with branches he collected from the remains of the school.
The United Nations experts are “deeply concerned about the” Scholastiid “in Gaza,” said the organization In a press release in April 2024.citing how Israel destroyed educational premises in the railway in the middle of the war against Hamas. The office called it “intentional efforts” to destroy the Palestinian education system. AND According to official Palestinian dataAll 12 higher education institutions in Gaza have been destroyed or damaged.
In a statement to CBC News, the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) called the allegations of Scholasteide “unfounded and deeply unfounded”. At the Al-Azhar University, the army announced that he had found weapons, such as rocket parts and explosives, as well as a tunnel leading to a nearby school, providing photos for what he was found in the campus. It said Hamas used an object to attack Israeli troops.
Return to campus
The streets are becoming infertility that Khattab arrives at campus. The ruin is everywhere, with the effects of the war, leaving the land of gray-brown in color. Using his walking rod, he begins to indicate that there used to be various places – mostly ruins – in the campus.
“That’s what remains from the university, only one building,” he says. He once hosted scientific conferences, says El Saife.
For the last 15 months of the war, they have been left in the ruins of gauze and universities. Former Biochemistry Professor Muhammad Khattab took CBC Freelancer to see what was left of Al-Azhar University and tried to save everything he could.
The concrete fence that once surrounded the university was now only partially stood and was a spray painted with Hebrew graffiti. Some of them are sports singing, other names of the military brigade – all possible signs who entered the campus during the war.
Khattab received his doctorate from chemistry, biochemistry and pharmacy at Ruhr Bochum University in Germany in 1973. He says he worked in Saudi Arabia, Libya and Sudan, before returning to Gaza in 1995. And as someone who left the enclave in search of work and eventually returned, he visibly harassed when he remembers the US president Recent comments by Donald Trump to take over Gaza.
“Please don’t believe what Trump said, we’ll never get out of this country,” he said. “Our roots are very deep.”
Trump angered Palestinians and Arab leaders by Suggesting now taking over gauzeMove your population and turn it into what he called the “Riviera of the Middle East.” According to their plan, Palestinians would not have the right to return.
The first phase of Israel-Hamas cease-fire In the gauze bar, it is nearing its end, and there is already a conflict between the two sides. For the last three weeks, Hamas has published 18 of Israel, in exchange for hundreds of Palestinian detainees. This was according to their agreement, which compared Egypt and Qatar, to stop the fights that began after October 2023, when the Hamas on Israel killed about 1,200 people and took about 250 hostage. Israeli subsequent war in Gaza killed more than 48,000 Palestinians.
It seems that this week was close to failure, when both sides accused each other of violating their agreement. Hamas said he would pause the release of the hostages until Israel would no longer help in Gaza; Israel said the fight in the enclave would continue if the militant group would not post hostages on Saturday.
Then on Thursday Hamas re -confirm its commitment to the agreementSaying that three Israeli soils will be released on Saturday, although she rejected what he called “the” language of threats and intimidation “from Israel. The group cited Israel’s additional help in Gaza as their explanation for a decision.
‘Everything is destroyed’
Empty black -white canistere bombs with stickers written on Hebrew back soil khattab walks further. He walked along the big crowd of them and raised it. He feels like this is the Third World War, he says. He wonders where the contents of these containers landed and whose life they could take away.
Lonely, partially stood a building in the campus, in which Khattab emphasized accommodation at agricultural faculties, veterinary medicine, law and political science. As it breaks through the stairs, the sound of his walking rod by the floor echoes the remaining walls of the building.
Visibly shocked, Khattab grows up himself as he passes the halls he once knew. “Everything is destroyed,” he says. The walls here also defulted graffiti.
Finally, the professor enters the yard of the building. The soil is fully covered with a bunch of bent aluminum beams, office furniture and documents. He bends to pick up a bunch of paper. They are transcripts – signs of life that once had space, long before the war, with tags that no longer matters to the students who received them.
“In English they received 77 of the 100, in Arabica, 85, in philosophy, 88…. A great, excellent grade.”
