Students and staff work to bring Islamic University of Gaza back to life
The ruined buildings of the Islamic University of Gaza
Lina Ghassan Abu Zayed reports in Al Jazeera on 27 July 2026:
Before the war, the Islamic University of Gaza was one of the leading public universities in the Palestinian enclave. Despite the challenges of Israeli air attacks and a siege on Gaza, it worked to provide the best possible academic environment for students.
Of particular focus were fields relying heavily on practical training, such as medicine, health sciences and engineering. But Israel’s crippling hold on Gaza posed huge challenges in teaching these disciplines.
Still, students spent hours in laboratories, working with medical equipment, handling samples and applying what they had learned theoretically in classrooms to ready themselves for futures in science, medicine and engineering.
All this changed on October 8, 2023, when Israel’s genocidal war on Gaza began. It saw university campuses bombed and a tightening of a siege that restricted the entry of even pens and notebooks.
Yassin al-Nounou, the university’s laboratory coordinator, said equipment to support medical and health sciences had arrived just days before the war began. It included anatomy models and educational skeletons to strengthen practical training and bring students closer to real workplace environments. These plans came to a halt when the university lost a significant part of its infrastructure, laboratories and equipment when massive Israeli bombing began.
Even the latest “ceasefire”, beginning in October 2025, repeatedly violated by Israel, has brought a new challenge: how to rebuild education for students from rubble?
Days of disaster
As many as 19 educational buildings were destroyed in Israel’s genocidal war on Gaza, while about 500 classrooms, 200 scientific laboratories and 75 computer laboratories were also severely damaged. The central library lost more than 240,000 books, journals, references and academic theses