Class Destroyed

This is the Islamic University of Gaza, or IUG, the Strip’s oldest degree-awarding institution.

It opened in 1978, its earliest classes held in tents.

It grew into a sprawling and modern campus with dozens of buildings across Gaza, with doctors, engineers, celebrated poets and politicians — including Hamas leaders — among its graduates.

This is IUG now.

The Israeli military destroyed the university’s main buildings in air strikes on Oct. 11.

It hailed the assault, saying the buildings and surrounding areas were used by Hamas “above and below ground” for training and to develop weapons. University administrators and students deny these charges.

Gaza’s youngest university was set to mark its 10th anniversary this year — and planned to open to the public a museum highlighting Palestinian history and culture.

In moments, Israa was destroyed.

A photograph on Abujaser's Instagram account on Oct. 4 shows him on campus, beaming.

“The first picture in the fourth year,” he wrote alongside a dove and olive branch emoji.

Days later the war shattered his plans of becoming a qualified psychologist.

Abujaser was drawn to Israa because of its beautiful campus and its clinical psychology program — and he loved playing on the school’s competitive volleyball team.

He also believed in Israa’s mission — a modern university providing a higher education for those who might not be able to afford it.

Aya Salama, a 21-year-old English language and translation student, was set to graduate this spring from Al-Azhar University. Here she’s pictured, wearing a pink headscarf, with her classmates and professor during a phonetics class in May 2022.

Salama, left, and her friends are struggling to cope with their academic plans hanging in the balance. “As a student, this year was supposed to be the most beautiful year for us,” she said. 

“We were dreaming of the graduation party, what we were going to wear, what activities we were going to do.”

Salama fondly recalled the “breakfast parties” she would have with her friends on Al-Azhar’s lawn before classes. It was a ritual of sorts for them.

This is Salama’s home after it was demolished in an airstrike on Al Maghazi camp in northern Gaza on New Year’s Eve.

“The Israeli army has killed all our plans, all our passions,” she said, referring to her disrupted college life, adding that she has “literally cried many nights” over the news that her campus had also been destroyed.

Around half of Gaza’s population is under the age of 18, and unemployment rates – before the war at about 45% – are among the highest in the world.

Higher education is seen as a way to combat a sense of powerlessness.

When professor Akram Habeeb joined the IUG faculty in 1992, an American literature degree wasn’t offered anywhere in Gaza.

“I was very keen on teaching American lit and making our students understand the American values and the American beliefs – to show that American people are different from the government,” said Habeeb, who got his Ph.D. at Indiana University of Pennsylvania.

He cultivated his department over three decades, teaching Emily Dickinson and Thomas Paine, among others.

His favorite assignment was asking students to analyze the literary style and political arguments in the U.S. Declaration of Independence, and then draft a Palestinian one.

The irony is not lost on him that his life’s work – four decades of lecture recordings and syllabuses — was destroyed by an Israeli military that is partially funded and armed by the U.S.

“Everything is leveled to the ground,” Habeeb said of the university buildings, including his office, that he saw while fleeing Gaza City in mid-October.

“My research, my books, my personal things,” the professor said. “I won’t retrieve them.”

Habeeb, who never stopped teaching even though he is officially retired, is anxious to get back to work.

“I'm waiting for the moment the war is over.”

Qasem Waleed, an IUG physics graduate and English literature student, has rescued university library books from being sold as kindling for cooking fires.

“I will return them once the universities get back to work again,” he said from the refugee camp that is now his home.

But Khalidi, the Columbia professor, warned not everything can be restored.

“You can rebuild some of these things,” he said. “But the records — and the people — are irreplaceable.”