Gaza- “The war has befallen us and destroyed us.” Student Majd Firas Hamad describes the impact of the Israeli war on him as a high school student displaced from the town of Beit Hanoun in the northern Gaza Strip, and currently residing with his family in a school in the city of Khan Yunis in the southern Gaza Strip.
The same description was repeated by other Tawjihi students, like Majd, who were displaced by the war from their homes, lost their academic year, and deprived them of the final exams that their peers were preparing for in the West Bank, Jerusalem, and outside Palestine.
The ongoing Israeli war for the ninth month in a row has tampered with the future of approximately 40,000 Tawjihi students who will not take the exams scheduled for June 22, in a precedent that has not occurred since the unification of the educational curricula and high school exams in the West Bank, the Gaza Strip, and East Jerusalem, following the establishment of the Palestinian Authority in 2017. 1994.
These exams represent a dream for students and their families, and they gain special importance. A student’s future and university choices are often determined based on his results there.
Nakba of war
Majd (17 years old) began preparing early for Tawjihi and took advantage of the summer vacation by enrolling in private lessons. He told Tel Aviv Tribune Net that he enrolled in strengthening lessons in mathematics, physics, and the English language, to raise his level and obtain a high grade that would qualify him to study pharmacy.
Majd is the eldest son of a family of 5 members. His father is a pharmacist who owns 3 pharmacies in the town of Beit Hanoun. The son hoped to fulfill his father’s dream of joining pharmacy and helping him in what he described as “the project of a lifetime,” managing pharmacies and expanding the scope of work.
In the first year of secondary school, this young man obtained an average of 87%, and he says that he was studying all hours of the day and part of the night in order to obtain a better result in the Tawjihi program in order to achieve his father’s dream, and to bring joy to the heart of his mother, who supports him all the time and provides him with everything he needs in order to devote his time. To study.
“All of that collapsed. The war has befallen us and destroyed our lives and our future,” Majd says, pointing with his hand to the classroom in which he lives with his family and others. He continues with regret, “The war has turned our lives upside down, and schools have turned into shelter centers for the displaced, and the classrooms are no longer for teaching, and he has missed them.” The voice of the teacher and the students, and the cries of the children and the suffering of the mothers.”
Majd did not expect the war to last this long. Before his first displacement from his home in Beit Hanoun, he made sure to keep a copy of his study materials on his mobile phone, but he did not review them for more than a week. He says that the features of the war seemed to become clear and that it was different from all wars. Previous.
Due to repeated displacement and the lack of electricity and the Internet, it was not easy for Majd to study, but he says that he has recently resumed strengthening himself in English.
This student hopes that the war will end, and that the Ministry of Education will have a plan to compensate the high school students in the Gaza Strip for what they missed, and give them the opportunity to sit for exams, and not waste a year of their lives. He says, “My father wants me to study pharmacy at Al-Azhar University in Gaza City, as he hates being abroad and is not… He believes in traveling abroad and immigration.”
Deferred dreams
Firas Hamad (45 years old), Majd’s father, returned to Gaza in 1994. He was born in Algeria. He told Tel Aviv Tribune Net, “I reject exile and immigration, and I want my son to be raised before my eyes and build himself and his future here in Gaza. We have the ability to provide and build the country with our hands and minds.”
Despite what he describes as a “painful irony,” where the school that he and his wife had always sought to cultivate love in their son’s heart turned into a place of displacement and shelter, Dr. Firas says, “In a school like this, we would have been waiting for the moment when Majd would sit for the Tawjihi exams, and we would be happy that he excelled, had it not been for this war.” “The crazy one.”
Firas and his family reside with his brother and his family (9 members) in a classroom in a school in Khan Yunis, to which they were displaced after leaving neighboring Rafah, in the wake of an Israeli ground military operation on May 7, and he says, “I always visited Majd at the school to ask about him and to check on the teachers.” About his level and commitment, and the day came that I live with him in school and within the same class.”
The father suffered his share of war losses, and was displaced repeatedly, the first of which was the night of the first day of the attack on October 7, 2023, and he moved his family to the Beit Lahia project, and from there to the Nuseirat camp, and a nearby Israeli air strike caused the death of his wife’s nephew and others were injured. The family was displaced to a shelter in the city of Rafah, before the current displacement to Khan Yunis.
The occupation forces destroyed Firas’ three pharmacies, and his home was severely damaged. However, he shows a great deal of patience and steadfastness, and is keen to instill them in his son Majd and support him “so that despair and frustration do not creep into his heart.”
He says, “The war will end, and despite the massive amount of blood and destruction, life will go on, and we will rise again, and I want Majd to complete my life’s project, excel, and study pharmacy here in Gaza.”
Majd helps his father at a “free medical point,” which Dr. Firas was keen to move with him from Rafah to Khan Yunis, in order to help the displaced and sick people in the shelter center.
We hold on to hope
In a similar story, student Rana Al-Qarman (17 years old) used vocabulary close to Majd, telling Tel Aviv Tribune Net, “All my tiredness and dreams are gone. The war destroyed our lives.”
Rana chose the scientific stream in high school, and she dreamed of excelling and studying the “Information Security” major at the university. She wondered, “Where are these dreams? We are now only thinking about escaping with our lives from this war.”
Rana and her family (six members) were displaced from the town of Beit Hanoun to Rafah, and they left for a school in Khan Yunis at the beginning of the ground invasion.
Rana’s mother (43 years old) is keen to support her, even though she herself acknowledges the impact of the war on her psychologically and physically. She tells Tel Aviv Tribune Net, “The war deprived us of our loved ones and our homes, but we must cling to hope in order to achieve our dreams.”
This mother of a son and three daughters says, “My ambition is for them to excel and be distinguished figures in society.” However, she does not hide her fear of the post-war phase, which she described as ambiguous, as the occupation destroyed universities, schools, factories, and all life’s facilities.
Targeted education
The occupation forces killed about 10,000 school and university students, including hundreds of high school students, in addition to thousands of wounded, and destroyed more than 109 schools and universities completely, and about 316 partially, according to monitoring by the “Government Media Office.”
The Director General of the Office, Ismail Al-Thawabta, told Al-Jazeera Net that the war deprived more than 625,000 students of the academic year, and hundreds of schools were turned into rubble, while existing schools were turned into shelter centers for the displaced, including students.
For the first time in many decades, 40,000 students from the Gaza Strip – out of 90,000 students in Palestine – will not be able to sit for the Tawjihi exams, due to the ongoing genocidal war on the Strip, according to Al-Thawabta.
Muhammad Masalma, Director General of Examinations at the Ministry of Education in Ramallah, speaking to Tel Aviv Tribune Net, estimates that the number of students registered for the high school exams in the sector is less than 1,200 students, both male and female, and they are among those currently in Egypt.
He added that about 50,000 students from the West Bank, Jerusalem, and expatriates outside the country, including Gaza students in Egypt, will take the exams scheduled for the 22nd of this month, while the war will deprive the majority of Gaza students.