Hundreds of Gaza students demonstrate for right to study abroad

Hundreds of university students trapped in the besieged Gaza Strip gathered on Monday outside the Journalists Syndicate’s headquarters in western Gaza City in a demonstration to demand permission to travel abroad and resume their studies. According to the student movement coordinator, Yaqeen Abu Anza, the students decided to demonstrate as their hopes to pursue higher education abroad hinge on permission to travel through Gaza’s Israeli-controlled border crossings, a permission that is not being granted. Speaking to Mada Masr, several students described years of trying and failing to secure a way out of the strip under Israel’s genocidal war and blockade, as their chances to study abroad erode with time. With Gaza’s academic institutions devastated and no viable alternatives, they fear they will lose out on their opportunities altogether. Students say they are pinning their hopes on building public pressure to push authorities to facilitate their travel. Earlier plans for three simultaneous demonstrations this month were postponed to merge into a “central protest,” Siraj Tabash, another student movement coordinator told Mada Masr. The protest, organized under the slogan “A movement between a dream and a crossing,” builds on months of student mobilization since the start of the war. The latest demonstration in this movement was held just weeks before the Rafah crossing was partially reopened in February for limited travel for medical treatment only. Gaza students protest to obtain permission to travel abroad and continue their studies. Over two years, Abu Anza has moved from one opportunity to the next without being able to leave Gaza to claim any of the university offers she received. Receiving a scholarship to study dentistry in Algeria, and later, admission to the Faculty of Medicine at Al-Azhar University in Cairo, she tried every possible means to be able to take up her spot, but all her attempts were thwarted by the Israeli travel blockade, she said. Likewise, Abdallah Awadallah, who was admitted to a medical school in Egypt, spent months trying to find a way out of Gaza, from contacting the Palestinian embassy in Cairo to joining collective appeals and initiatives, hoping for an exception that would classify students as a special humanitarian case, with no success. With each day that has passed since he accepted his position, he told Mada Masr, he feels himself drifting further from his dream of becoming a surgeon, describing it as “a daily feeling that the future is being lost.” Tabash, who was accepted to study software engineering at Cairo University two years ago, described his life as being “on hold.” He told Mada Masr that the siege and the closure of the Rafah crossing left him in constant fear of losing his chance for good. Given the siege, some students have turned to online learning, despite Gaza’s barely functioning internet network. University of Palestine law professor Adnan al-Hafy told Mada Masr that such efforts amount to a dead end due to logistical challenges, including connectivity outages and lack of access to academic resources, describing the situation as “practically intractable,” with fragile solutions falling short of minimum academic requirements. With such high barriers to study abroad, there have been attempts to resume classes during the ceasefire. But Tabash said Gaza’s universities “still lack the capabilities and resources necessary to properly restart the educational process.” Since October 7, 2023, Israel has destroyed around 165 universities and educational institutions, according to Gaza’s Government Media Office. Most of these had been converted during the war into shelters for the more than a million people displaced by airstrikes and ground operations. Hafy argued that the Occupation has turned the right to education into a tool of siege and political pressure, amid the near-total destruction of academic infrastructure inside Gaza and restrictions on travel through Rafah. He described the scale of destruction of Gaza’s universities, met with international silence, as a form of systematic scholasticide , going beyond military objectives to become an explicit attempt to erase cultural identity and wipe out the future of education. While there are no precise figures for students accepted to universities outside Gaza, around 56,000 students are eligible for university enrollment, according to Palestinian Education Ministry spokesperson Sadeq al-Khaddour. Ahmed Nabhan, who has received a scholarship to study  in Egypt and who also remains unable to leave Gaza, said he joined Monday’s protest in the hope that his voice would reach those responsible for Gaza’s youth, stressing that it would not be the last demonstration calling for the reopening of Rafah to students. The post Hundreds of Gaza students demonstrate for right to study abroad first appeared on Mada Masr .