− Mohammed Atherulla Shariff
28 May, 2024: Most of Gaza’s schools, including all of its universities, have severe damage that makes them unusable, which could harm an entire generation, the United Nations and others say.
The United Nations said last month that it had documented at least 5,479 students, 261 teachers and 95 university professors who had been killed in Gaza since October, as well as at least 7,819 students and 756 teachers wounded. The implications for Gaza’s future are as profound as the devastation.
No end to the war in Gaza is in sight. Even if there were, it would do little to change the bleak educational prospects of more than 625,000 students who the United Nations estimates are in the territory.
Seven months of war have devastated every level of education there. More than 80 percent of Gaza’s schools have been severely damaged or destroyed by fighting, according to the United Nations, including every one of its 12 universities including Al Azhar and Al Isra universities. Israeli bombardment has ravaged the educational infrastructure and caused mental trauma to thousands of besieged students.
“It may be reasonable to ask if there is an intentional effort to comprehensively destroy the Palestinian education system, an action known as ‘scholasticide,’” a group of 25 U.N. experts said in a statement.
“These attacks are not isolated incidents,” it added. “They present a systematic pattern of violence aimed at dismantling the very foundation of Palestinian society.” More than 40 percent of schools (288) in Gaza are run by the UN Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA), while the rest are either directly operated by the Palestinian Authority or privately managed.
All of them are currently shut as more than 85 percent of Gaza’s 2.3 million people have been displaced amid continued Israeli ground and air offensive that has killed more than 40,000 people, including 15,000 children.
According to UNRWA data from 2018, Gaza had 737 schools. At least 9,367 teachers worked in the 288 UNRWA schools.
As per the data released by Education Cluster Palestine, more than 625000 students and 22000 teachers previously attended 813 schools operating in 563 school buildings. 63% of schools in Gaza shared buildings and operate in a “double-shifting” system. The difference in the number of affected school buildings and affected schools is due to the double-shifting system.
The Israeli military blamed the destruction of Gaza’s schools, like its hospitals, on the “exploitation of civilian structures for terror purposes” by Hamas, which it said builds tunnels beneath them and uses them to launch attacks and store weapons.
Hamas has long denied such accusations. When Matthew Miller, the State Department spokesman, accused the group last fall of operating in schools, it responded with a statement saying “the claim that Hamas is using hospitals and schools as military sites is a repetition of a blatantly false narrative.”
Moreover, the Israeli military operations in almost all the said hospitals and schools are evidently contrary to their claim. As observed by the UN official, the destruction of educational institutions and faculties is a deliberate attempt to deprive generations from seeking education.
Even after the International Court of Justice ordered Israel to stop the war immediately, destruction of libraries along with other brutal attacks on civilians is continued defiantly.
Al-Israa University Library and National Museum (near Gaza City) Description of damage: Destroyed by controlled detonation by the Israeli military, including the library and National Museum which contained over 3,000 archaeological artefacts. The museum was looted prior to destruction.
