Dr. Ibrahim M.I. Alsemeiri, Al-Israa’ University Gaza

Despite what may appear externally as a temporary pause or transformation of Israel’s genocide, Gaza remains under siege and persistent attacks. As we mark 78 years of the Palestinian Nakba, Gaza’s population is concentrated in extremely dense living conditions along the narrow coastal strip, with no genuinely safe zones available. Movement, stability, and access to basic services remain severely restricted. But despite this environment, education persists not as a structured system but as an act of endurance and necessity. Many students continue to pursue their studies in whatever form possible. However, this should not be interpreted as normal resilience. Rather, it reflects survival under acute deprivation, underlining Palestinians’ determination and the collapse of institutional support systems that should normally sustain learning. The consequences of this ongoing catastrophe, an extension of the Nakba of 1948, are not temporary. In fact, the psychological, social, and educational impacts are profound and long-lasting. Students are exposed to continuous trauma, grief, and uncertainty, which significantly affect cognitive function, motivation, and academic performance. These effects cannot be resolved in the short term; they will require decades of structured psychological, educational, and social recovery.

In a recent study published in 2025, I addressed the conditions for university students in Gaza whose experiences of living through genocide remain largely absent from global discussions on education in wartime contexts. Students from institutions such as the Islamic University, Al-Azhar University and Al-Aqsa University described repeated cycles of displacement, moving between overcrowded shelters, damaged buildings, and temporary tents under inordinately unstable conditions. At present, large parts of Gaza— estimated at around 60%—are under direct military control or occupation from the east, forcing the population into increasingly narrow and densely populated zones along the coastal strip of the Mediterranean Sea. In this constrained space, daily survival has become the central reality, while education is maintained only through exceptional resilience. Students reported being displaced numerous times throughout the war, often losing everything each time they move, including homes, personal belongings, books, electronic devices, and any stable environment for study. Access to electricity, internet, and academic resources has become highly inconsistent or entirely unavailable. As a result, learning is no longer tied to structured educational spaces but is instead attempted in shelters, tents, or overcrowded homes, where safety, concentration, and continuity are extremely limited.

What makes this situation historically and structurally unprecedented is not only the scale of destruction but the simultaneous accumulation of multiple crises affecting every dimension of life at once. Gaza is now experiencing widespread destruction of infrastructure, severe shortages of food and medicine, limited access to clean water, and a collapsing healthcare system. Approximately 80% of the territory has been damaged or destroyed, including residential areas, small businesses, factories, and agricultural land. This has occurred amidst continuous bombardment and a comprehensive blockade imposed by land, air, and sea. These overlapping conditions create a reality in which survival itself is uncertain, and normal social and educational life becomes nearly impossible.

At the same time, as discussed in my study, Israel continues its systematic targeting of intellectual and human capital. The killing and loss of academics, students, professionals, and other highly educated individuals represents not only immediate human loss but also a long-term destruction of societal capacity, a phenomenon I conceptualise as mindocide, meaning the systematic targeting of educated, intellectual, and capable individuals whose presence is essential for leadership, recovery, and reconstruction. Mindocide does not operate in isolation; it functions as a core mechanism within scholasticide, the broader destruction of educational institutions, knowledge systems, and academic life. Together, scholasticide and mindocide contribute directly to what I define as futuricide—the structural destruction of a society’s ability to rebuild itself in the future through the elimination of its intellectual, educational, and leadership foundations. Without scholars, educators, professionals, and students, the process of recovery becomes severely delayed or fundamentally disrupted, as the human capacity required for reconstruction is systematically eroded.

The situation in Gaza is not simply one of a conventional war context but a comprehensive collapse of human, educational, and institutional life. It represents a convergence of different ‘cides’—scholasticide, mindocide, and futuricide—where education systems are destroyed, intellectual capacity is targeted, and the future development of society is fundamentally undermined. Any meaningful response must therefore move beyond emergency interventions and address the long-term reconstruction of both knowledge systems and human capacity.

Read the full article on this topic at https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/01436597.2025.2603506.

Image credit: “Voices from Gaza – women’s stories – Leen” by UN Women, CC BY-NC-ND 2.0