Gaza cafes become classrooms as students struggle to learn amid Israeli genocide

Gaza’s cafes have become classrooms and lecture spaces crowded with university students struggling to learn since the Israeli occupation army destroyed the academic infrastructure across the Palestinian enclave, Quds Press has reported.

The cafes and rest houses are generally in the west of the central and southern Gaza Strip near the cities of Deir Al-Balah and Khan Yunis. They provide stable internet and electricity and a relatively quiet environment away from the noise of displacement camps and tents.

University students in Gaza have started to enrol with West Bank universities as “visiting students”, based on a plan prepared by the Ministry of Education in consultation with the presidents of Palestinian universities in the occupied West Bank and Gaza Strip. It is a bold attempt to fill the educational gap and preserve the students’ future.

Lectures are being recorded and made available online. Students can even participate in lectures with their colleagues in West Bank universities.

The Israeli genocide in Gaza has deprived at least 120,000 students of their university education. Asmaa, 23, is one of them. She was in her final year of study when the war broke out in 2023.

“I was studying dentistry at Palestine University and I was in my fifth and final year,” she told Quds Press. “I have ten academic hours and one training semester left to obtain a certificate to practise dentistry and be able to open my own clinic.”

Her family, she added, lost their house in Gaza City, which included a clinic built by her father as a graduation gift. “Because of the war, we were forced to move south, and I could not even carry my university books or my personal computer.”

Nevertheless, Asmaa stressed that she will complete what she had started. She has enrolled as a visiting student at An-Najah University in Nablus, and she follows her lectures from one of the rest houses in Deir Al-Balah along with some of her classmates.

The high cost of doing this, however, means that many students in Gaza are forced to postpone their studies until the war has ended. That’s the hope. In the meantime, the rest houses and cafes provide a safe outlet for at least some students to continue their education.

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