Project Overview
This commentary examines education as both a target of political violence and a source of Palestinian survival, self-sufficiency, memory, and resistance. It argues that attacks on universities, schools, scholars, manuscripts, textbooks, communications, and educational infrastructure do more than interrupt classroom learning. They threaten the community's capacity to record its history, care for its people, rebuild its institutions, and transmit knowledge across generations.
The article places these attacks within the longer structure of occupation, including military control, checkpoints, detention, restricted movement, and spatial boundaries. The destruction of educational life is therefore framed not as incidental damage, but as part of a wider effort to restrict Palestinian liberation and future-making.
Educational Suppression as a Tactic of Ethnic Cleansing
Since October 7, 2023, ninety-four university professors in the Gaza Strip have been killed. This is not by accident. The Israeli government controls the Palestinian census, meaning it has access to the address and location of every university professor. These are calculated attacks against the Palestinian people and their access to education.
This is an act of ethnic cleansing, an act of genocide. The Israeli attack on Gaza's universities and schools shows there is no length Israel will not go to in order to prevent Palestinian liberation.
These attacks are an act of dilation and near-complete deletion of ancestral, cultural, and educational knowledge, in the form of removing access to physical resources such as manuscripts, textbooks, and the internet, and in the form of killing distinguished scholars and removing their guidance from the population.
Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank employ education as a tool of liberation. Education is directed toward providing communities with the skills necessary for economic development and self-sufficiency. Vocational training and targeted education align with the specific needs of the society. It is crucial to recognize that education can be wielded as a source of empowerment and resistance.
Palestine has one of the highest literacy rates in the world, at 97.7 percent. Palestinians are historians, dedicated to accurately recording the reality they have been subjected to. They are linguists, scholars of multiple languages, and journalists, using their voices to reach Arabic speakers and English speakers alike. Palestinians are doctors and pharmacists, serving their communities in times of peace and war, dedicating their lives to service. Palestinians are engineers, who learn to build their communities themselves with the limited resources available to them.
This crisis did not start on October 7, 2023. As long as the occupation of Palestine has existed, Palestinians have been subject to stringent control mechanisms such as military presence, checkpoints, detention, and educational and spatial boundaries. Within this world of regulation and suppression, Palestinians rely on members of their communities in education institutions to provide for and build their communities.
These attacks are the latest in a series of acts of violence and preventative measures intended to ensure that any survivors will not have the capacity to provide for their communities and rebuild after the sustained bombardment of the Gaza Strip. The targeting of universities is the decimation of hope and opportunity for the youth.
References
"How Israel has destroyed Gaza's schools and universities." Al Jazeera, 24 Jan. 2024.
Protect Education in Insecurity and Conflict. "Educational Toll of Gaza War: At Least 2 Universities, 148 Schools." Protecting Education in Insecurity and Conflict.
World Bank. "Literacy Rate, Adult Total (% of People Ages 15 and Above): West Bank and Gaza." The World Bank, 2022.