We, the presidents of the three non-profit universities of Gaza-the Al-Aqsa University, the Al-Azhar-Gaza University and the Islamic University of Gaza-representing together the vast majority of Gaza students and members of the faculty, let us issue this unified declaration to the international academic community at an unprecedented era of devastation of higher education in Gaza.
The current genocidal war in Israel has provoked scholasticide – a systematic and deliberate attempt to eliminate our universities, their infrastructure, their teachers and their students. This destruction is not guaranteed; This is part of a targeted effort to eradicate the foundations of higher education in Gaza – bases that have long been pillars of resilience, hope and intellectual freedom in conditions of occupation and siege. While the university establishments of Palestine have been faced with attacks for decades, what we are witnessing today is an escalation: a passage of acts of repeated destruction to a attempt at total annihilation.
However, we remain resolved. For more than a year, we have mobilized and took measures to resist this assault and ensure that our universities continue.
Despite the physical erasure of campuses, laboratories, libraries and other facilities, as well as the assassination of our students and colleagues, our universities continue to exist. We are more than buildings – we are academic communities, made up of students, teachers and staff, still alive and determined to continue our mission.
As was part of the unified emergency declaration of Palestinian academics and administrators published on May 29, 2024, “the Israeli occupation forces have demolished our buildings, but our universities live.”
For more than a year, our teacher, our staff and our students persisted in our basic mission – teaching – under unimaginably hard conditions. The constant bombing, famine, restrictions on internet access, unstable electricity and the current horrors of the genocide did not break our will. We are still there, always taught and always engaged in the future of education in Gaza.
We urgently call our colleagues from around the world to work for:
- A lasting and durable ceasefire, without which no education system can prosper, and the end of all complicity with this genocide.
- Immediate international mobilization to support and protect Gaza higher education establishments as vital for survival and the long -term future of the Palestinian people.
- Recognition of scholasticide as a systematic war against education, and the need for coordinated and strategic international support in partnership with our universities for resilience and the reconstruction of our academic infrastructure and our communities.
We call on the international university community – our colleagues, institutions and friends – to:
- Support our efforts to continue to teach and carry out research, as a seat and in the midst of the loss.
- Get in the long-term reconstruction of Gaza universities in partnership with us, respecting our institutional autonomy and our university agency.
- Work in partnership with us. Commit directly with and support the very institutions that continue to embody academic life and collective intellectual resistance in Gaza.
Last year, we officially created the Emergency Committee for Gaza Universities, representing our three affiliated establishments and colleges – registering together between 80 and 85 percent of students from Gaza Universités. The committee exists to resist the erasure of our universities and offer a unified voice to the Academic Community of Gaza. Since then, he has established sub-committees focused on the subject to serve as trust and coordinated trusted channels.
We call on university communities around the world to coordinate in response to this call. The symbolic solidarity time has passed. We are now asking for a practical, structured and sustainable partnership.
Work next to us to ensure that the universities of Gaza live and remain an essential element of our collective future.
The opinions expressed in this article are the own authors and do not necessarily reflect the editorial position of Tel Aviv Tribune.