Education is a fundamental pillar of individual and societal advancement. The Universal Declaration of Human Rights affirms that education is a fundamental human right for all peoples. This right has been taken seriously in the West Bank and Gaza. Despite difficult conditions including ongoing occupation and siege, Palestinians have among the highest literacy rates in the world, at around 98 percent as of 2020. Yet despite the importance of education, both in international law and in Palestinian society, an entire generation now risks being deprived of this right, especially in Gaza.

In 2019-2020, the Occupied Palestinian Territories (OPT) had 217,645 students registered in higher education, of whom 62 percent was female and 38 percent male. This picture changed drastically when, after 7 October 2023, Gazan universities and institutions of higher learning were destroyed one by one until the last one was blown to pieces in January 2024. In the span of less than four months, seventeen universities and institutes that graduated more than 45,000 students annually were destroyed. What fell was not only walls, but, as a Gazan educator said,

The lives of professors and researchers – who carried knowledge in their hearts before they wrote it in books – were taken. And our students, who once dreamed of graduation, of advanced studies, of a dignified life are now among the martyrs, the displaced, or the missing (Picturing Scholasticide.org).

In the first six months after 7 October 2023, the IDF killed more than 5,479 students, 261 teachers and 95 university professors (OHCHR, 2024). By 15 April 2025, 13,419 students had been killed and 21,653 injured. Among educational staff, at this point, 651 teachers had been killed and 2,791 injured........

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