How the Israeli military’s destruction of Gaza’s schools and universities is creating a lost generation

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Academics warn the destruction of Gaza’s schools and other educational institutions by the Israeli military could end up creating a lost generation. (AFP photos)
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Tarek al-Anabi, a 25-year-old Palestinian man, gathers displaced children at the Taha Hussein school eles between Israel and Palestinian Hamas militants. (AFP)
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Academics warn the destruction of Gaza’s schools and other educational institutions by the Israeli military could end up creating a lost generation. (AFP photo)
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Updated 08 February 2024
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How the Israeli military’s destruction of Gaza’s schools and universities is creating a lost generation

  • Academics say “wholesale destruction” of Gaza’s education system renders the Palestinian territory uninhabitable
  • Israel insists its forces only bombed schools and universities because Hamas was using them as training camps

LONDON: Children and young people who survive Israel’s military campaign in Gaza stand little chance of receiving a proper education as the destruction wrought on the Palestinian enclave reduces its schools, colleges and universities to rubble.

Al-Israa was the last of Gaza’s four universities that was still standing after more than three months of bombardment. However, in mid-January, the Israeli army, which had been encamped in its grounds, blew it up.

Footage shared on social media by Nicola Perugini, an associate professor at the University of Edinburgh, showed the moment the building collapsed, having reportedly been rigged with explosives. In response, Perugini called for “a full academic boycott” of Israel.

 

 

He is not alone. The British Middle East Center for Studies and Research has also decried the “wholesale destruction” of Gaza’s education system and has urged UK universities to offer more support to educators and institutions in the Palestinian territory.

A BRISMES email sent to UK vice-chancellors said: “Israel has systematically destroyed all Gaza’s universities. Footage shared by the BBC shows Al-Israa being completely destroyed. This act of wanton destruction follows repeated targeting since the start of the war.”

 

 

The email went on to ask UK institutions to “commit to set up placements, fellowships, and scholarships” for Palestinian students, enhance placements for Palestinian academics, and offer inter-institutional cooperation.

Noting with “regret” such offerings were not currently in place, BRISMES lambasted what it claimed was a “clear double standard when set against responses to Russia’s attack on Ukraine,” calling for the same level of support for Gazans.

“Within four months of Russia’s invasion, 71 partnerships were in place with Ukrainian universities and UK universities had come forward in their droves to support their Ukrainian counterparts, backed by UK government initiatives and funding,” the email added.

Certainly, the loss of Al-Israa highlights the multi-generational repercussions this war will have for those who survive it. Many now share BRISMES’ view that such losses are in fact a key objective of the Israeli government.




Palestinians walks past the damaged building of one of the faculties of the Azhar University in Gaza City on November 26, 2023, on the third day of a truce between Israel and Hamas. (AFP)

Birzeit University, a West Bank-based Palestinian institute, condemned the destruction of Al-Israa as yet another “part of the Israeli occupation’s onslaught against the Palestinians … (the goal of which is) to make Gaza uninhabitable; a continuation of the genocide.”

Samia Al-Botmeh, assistant professor of economics at Birzeit, told Times Higher Education magazine that the deliberate destruction of large public buildings, including universities, required significant planning, stressing it could only have been done as part of an intentional plan to make Gaza “uninhabitable.”

She said: “The destruction of the education sector is part of this overarching strategy of the destruction of every aspect of service in Gaza that makes life there possible.”

Neve Gordon, a professor of human rights law at Queen Mary University, even described it as “educide.”

 

Israel has sought to defend its bombing of education institutes, claiming these buildings were being used by Hamas as training camps. Gordon told Times Higher Education the damage wrought would take “10-20 years to recover from.”

Nor is it just the infrastructure that has come under assault. Euro-Med Human Rights Monitor has recorded the killing of 94 university academics by the Israeli army in the course of the war, 17 of whom held professorships and 58 doctoral degrees.

Geneva-based Euro-Med said: “The Israeli army has targeted academic, scientific, and intellectual figures in the Strip in deliberate and specific air raids on their homes without prior notice.

“Those targeted have been crushed to death beneath the rubble, along with members of their families and other displaced families. Initial data indicates there is no justification or clear reason behind the targeting of these people.”

 

 

Others have been less certain of claims about the deliberate targeting of education, among them Yossi Mekelberg, associate fellow of the Middle East and North Africa program at Chatham House, and a strident critic of Israel’s war on Gaza.

Mekelberg said that while the destruction of Gaza’s schools and universities was “of course” part of the overall strategy in Gaza, he was less convinced that preventing education in the Strip was a priority for the Israeli military at this moment.

Stressing that it was by no means intended to justify the behavior, he told Arab News the Israeli war plan was to treat “the entire Strip as collateral damage, and sadly education suffers too.”




Displaced Palestinian children attend a Qur'an class at Bear al-Saba school in Rafah, southern Gaza Strip, on January 24, 2024, amid ongoing battles between Israel and the Palestinian militant group Hamas. (AFP)

Similarly, Julia Roknifard, an assistant professor at the University of Nottingham’s School of Politics, History and International Relations, said she had yet to see any “explicit or implicit” testimonies that this was in fact the plan.

“At the very least, it falls within the general approach of the right,” she told Arab News. “As in, not specifically weaponizing education but destroying all the infrastructure. It’s hard to single out education in these circumstances when all the rest is subject to destruction too.”

As Gaza’s university system lies in ruins, its schools are faring little better. Figures from the UN’s Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs report that as of Feb. 4, some 78 percent of schools — representing 386 institutions — had sustained damage, with 138 having sustained major damage.

 

Phillippe Lazzarini, commissioner general of the embattled UN Relief and Works Agency, said that widespread damage would result in a “lost generation” of Gazan youth.

Speaking to the BBC after footage emerged of Israeli army troops celebrating the destruction of a UN-run school in northern Gaza, Lazzarini said: “There are today more than half a million children in the primary and secondary school system.“How will they go back if you cannot bring people back to their homes, which have been completely destroyed? And I’m afraid that we’re running the risk here of losing a generation of children.”

 

A senior Israeli official told the BBC it was necessary to destroy the school because Hamas militants “cynically invade and use schools to launch attacks against Israeli troops.”

Critics have accused the Israeli government of Benjamin Netanyahu of deliberately reducing Gazan schools to debris as part of a process of “collective punishment” for the Hamas-led Oct. 7 attacks.

In a statement, UNESCO sought to remind “all actors” of their obligations to comply with Resolution 2601 of 2021, which “strongly condemned” attacks and threats against schools, students and teachers.

 

 

Noting the UN Security Council’s adoption of the resolution, it added that “UNESCO urges all parties to armed conflict to immediately cease such attacks and threats of attacks and to refrain from actions that impede access to education.

“This resolution also ‘condemns the military use of schools in contravention of international law and recognizes that use by armed forces and armed groups may render schools legitimate targets of attack, thus endangering children’s and teachers’ safety as well as their education.’”




Israeli troops hold a position in front of a school during a military operation in the northern Gaza Strip. (Israeli Army photo / handout via AFP)

Al-Botmeh of Birzeit University told Times Higher Education that learning had been a “mechanism of resistance” for the Palestinian people — a fact she said Israel’s government well understood.

That is why Israel is “trying to undermine our capacity to survive, resist, our capacity to continue as a people,” she said, adding that while such efforts would undermine the process of rebuilding, “it will not stop us.

“People around the world are not broken by colonizers.”

 


Strikes hit Beirut’s southern suburbs after Israeli evacuation call

Updated 7 sec ago
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Strikes hit Beirut’s southern suburbs after Israeli evacuation call

BEIRUT: Strikes hit the southern suburbs of Beirut on Friday shortly after the Israeli army called for the evacuation of certain neighborhoods, AFPTV footage showed.
In addition to the suburbs of the Lebanese capital, the Israeli army called overnight for the evacuation of several areas in the south of the country.

UN could meet with Israel PM despite warrant: UN

Updated 22 November 2024
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UN could meet with Israel PM despite warrant: UN

  • UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres and Netanyahu have not spoken since the war started
  • UN spokesman Stephane Dujarric said UN policy on contacts with people facing arrest warrants dates back to a document issued in 2013

UNITED NATIONS: The arrest warrant issued against Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu over the war in Gaza does not bar UN officials from meeting with him in the course of their work, the UN said Thursday.
UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres and Netanyahu have not spoken since the war started as a result of the Hamas attack against Israel on October 7, 2023, although there have been contacts with the Israeli leader by UN officials in the region.
Guterres has been declared persona non grata by Israel, which accuses him of being biased in favor of the Palestinians. So talks between him and Netanyahu are very unlikely.
After the warrants issued Thursday by the International Criminal Court against Netanyahu, former defense minister Yoav Gallant and Hamas’s military chief Mohammed Deif, UN spokesman Stephane Dujarric said UN policy on contacts with people facing arrest warrants dates back to a document issued in 2013.
“The rule is that there should not be any contacts between UN officials and individuals subject to arrest warrants,” Dujarric said.
But limited contacts are allowed “to address fundamental issues, operational issues, and our ability to carry out our mandates,” he added.
In late October, at a summit of the BRICS countries in Russia, Guterres met with President Vladimir Putin, who faces an arrest warrant from the ICP over the war in Ukraine.
That meeting, during which Guterres reiterated his condemnation of the Russian invasion, angered Ukraine.


Palestinians welcome ICC arrest warrants for Israeli PM and former defense minister

Updated 22 November 2024
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Palestinians welcome ICC arrest warrants for Israeli PM and former defense minister

  • Palestinian Authority calls on UN member states to ensure the warrants for Benjamin Netanyahu and Yoav Gallant, who are accused of war crimes, are acted upon
  • The EU’s chief diplomat, Josep Borrel, says decision is ‘binding’ on all members of the International Criminal Court

LONDON: Palestinians welcomed the decision by the International Criminal Court on Thursday to issue arrest warrants for Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his former minister of defense, Yoav Gallant.

The Palestinian Authority said the court’s decision comes as Israeli forces continue to bomb Gaza in a conflict that has killed nearly 45,000 Palestinians since the Oct. 7 attacks by Hamas, and it hopes the ruling will help to restore faith in international law, the official Palestinian WAFA news agency reported.

Netanyahu and Gallant are the first leading officials from a nation allied with the West against whom the ICC has issued arrest warrants since the court was established in July 2002. It also issued an arrest warrant for Mohammed Deif, the head of the military wing of Hamas. Israeli authorities said in August he was killed by their forces in an attack the previous month, though Hamas have not confirmed this.

All three men are accused of war crimes and crimes against humanity over their actions during the war in Gaza or the Oct. 7 attacks.

The PA said the decision to issue warrants against Netanyahu and Gallant was important because Palestinians “are being subjected to genocide and war crimes, represented by starvation as a method of warfare,” as well as mass displacement and collective punishment.

The PA, which signed up to the ICC in 2015, called on all UN member states to ensure the warrants are acted upon and to “cut off contact and meetings with the international wanted men, Netanyahu and Gallant.” Israel is not a member of the ICC.

The EU’s chief diplomat, Josep Borrel, posted a message on social media platform X on Thursday in which he described the court’s decisions as “binding” on all those who have signed up to it.

“These decisions are binding on all states party to the Rome Statute (the treaty that established the ICC), which includes all EU member states,” he wrote.

Netanyahu, Israel’s longest-serving prime minister who has spent 17 years in office during three spells in charge since 1996, denounced the decision by the ICC to issue the warrant as “antisemitic.”

He said it would “have serious consequences for the court and those who will cooperate with it in this matter.”


Between bomb craters: Taxis stuck on war-hit Lebanon-Syria border

Updated 21 November 2024
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Between bomb craters: Taxis stuck on war-hit Lebanon-Syria border

MASNAA, Lebanon: Stuck in no man’s land on the war-hit Lebanon-Syria border, cab driver Fadi Slika now scrapes a living ferrying passengers between two deep craters left by Israeli air strikes.

The journey is just 2 km, but Slika has no other choice — his taxi is his only source of income.

“My car is stuck between craters: I can’t reach Lebanon or return to Syria. Meanwhile, we’re under threat of (Israeli) bombardment,” said the 56-year-old.

“I work and sleep here between the two holes,” he said.

A dual Lebanese-Syrian national, Slika has been living in his car, refusing to abandon it when it broke down until a mechanic brought a new engine.

His taxi is one of the few that has been operating between the two craters since Israeli strikes in October effectively blocked traffic on the Masnaa crossing.

The bombed area has become a boon for drivers of tuk-tuks, who can navigate the craters easily. 

A makeshift stall, the Al-Joura (pit in Arabic) rest house, and a shop are set up nearby.

Slika went for 12 days without work while waiting for his taxi to be fixed. The car has become his home. A warm blanket covers its rear seats against eastern Lebanon’s cold winters, and a big bag of pita bread sits on the passenger side.

Before being stranded, Slika made about $100 for trips from Beirut to Damascus.

Now, an average fare between the craters is just $5.50 each way, though he said he charged more.

On Sept. 23, Israel intensified its aerial bombing of Lebanon and later sent in ground troops, nearly a year after Hezbollah initiated limited exchanges of fire in support of Hamas amid the Gaza war.

Since then, Israel has bombed several land crossings with Syria out of service. 

It accuses Hezbollah of using what are key routes for people fleeing the war in Lebanon to transfer weapons from Syria.

Amid the hardship of the conflict, more than 610,000 people have fled from Lebanon to Syria, mostly Syrians, according to Lebanese authorities.

Undeterred by attacks, travelers still trickle through Masnaa, traversing the two craters that measure about 10 meters deep and 30 meters wide.

On the other side of the road, Khaled Khatib, 46, was fixing his taxi, its tires splattered with mud and hood coated in dust.

“After the first strike, I drove from Syria and parked my car before the crater. When the second strike hit, I got stuck between the two holes,” he said, sweat beading as he looked under the hood.

“We used to drive people from Damascus to Beirut. Now, we take them from one crater to another.”

Khatib doesn’t charge passengers facing tough times, he said, adding he had been displaced from southern Beirut, hammered by Israeli raids since September. He moved back to his hometown near the Masnaa crossing.

Despite harsh times, a sense of camaraderie reigns.

The drivers “became like brothers. We eat together at the small stall every day ... and we help each other fix our cars,” he said.

Mohamed Yassin moved his coffee stall from the Masnaa crossing closer to the pit after the strike, offering breakfast, lunch, and coffee. “We try to help people as much as possible,” he said.

Farther from the Lebanese border, travelers crossed the largest of the two crevasses, wearing plastic coverings on their shoes to avoid slipping in the mud.

A cab driver on a mound called out, “Taxi to Damascus!” while tuk-tuks and trucks ferried passengers, bags, and mattresses across.

Nearby, Aida Awda Mubarak, a Syrian mother of six, haggled with a tuk-tuk driver over the $1 fare.

The 52-year-old said she was out of work and needed to see her son after the east Lebanon town where he lives was hit by Israeli strikes.

“Sometimes we just can’t afford to pay for a tuk-tuk or a cab,” she said.


Netanyahu says ICC warrant won’t stop Israel defending itself

Updated 21 November 2024
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Netanyahu says ICC warrant won’t stop Israel defending itself

  • “No outrageous anti-Israel decision will prevent us — and it will not prevent me — from continuing to defend our country in every way,” Netanyahu said
  • The premier is accused alongside his former defense minister Yoav Gallant of “war crimes” and “crimes against humanity“

JERUSALEM: Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Thursday that an arrest warrant issued against him by the International Criminal Court over his conduct of the Gaza war would not stop him defending Israel.
“No outrageous anti-Israel decision will prevent us — and it will not prevent me — from continuing to defend our country in every way,” Netanyahu said in a video statement. “We will not yield to pressure,” he vowed.
The premier is accused alongside his former defense minister Yoav Gallant of “war crimes” and “crimes against humanity” for Israel’s actions in Gaza.
He described Thursday’s decision as a “dark day in the history of nations.”
“The International Criminal Court in The Hague, which was established to protect humanity, has today become the enemy of humanity,” he said, adding that the accusations were “utterly baseless.”
Israel has been fighting in Gaza since October 2023, when a cross-border attack by Hamas militants resulted in the deaths of 1,206 people, mostly civilians, according to an AFP tally of Israeli official figures.
Its retaliatory campaign has led to the deaths of 44,056 people in Gaza, most of them civilians, according to figures from the Hamas-run territory’s health ministry which the United Nations considers reliable.
UN agencies have warned of a severe humanitarian crisis in Gaza, including possible famine, due to a lack of food and medicines.
The court said it had found “reasonable grounds” to believe Netanyahu and Gallant bore “criminal responsibility” for the war crime of starvation as a method of warfare, as well as the crimes against humanity of murder, persecution, and other inhumane acts.
Netanyahu said the court was accusing Israel of “fictitious crimes,” while ignoring “the real war crimes, horrific war crimes being committed against us and against many others around the world.”
In addition to Netanyahu and Gallant, the court also issued an arrest warrant for Hamas military wing chief Mohammed Deif, who Israel said was killed in an air strike last July.
Hamas has never confirmed his death.
Netanyahu mocked the court’s decision to issue a warrant for “the body of Mohammed Deif.”