Resisting Erasure: Aid for Gaza Students Is a Form of Survival, Scholarship Project Says
“I will never forget the first day of the assault. I was trying to focus on my studies, and suddenly everything turned into noise and explosions. Classes stopped, the university was shut down, and my dreams collapsed before my eyes. Between fear and repeated displacement, I clung to the hope that I would return to my studies despite everything I had lost.”
These are the words of Salwa, a student at the Islamic University of Gaza who recently spoke to ISNAD, a nonprofit scholarship initiative.
Salwa’s story may seem personal, but it reflects the reality of an entire generation of students in the besieged Palestinian territory. The Israeli war in Gaza that has destroyed buildings, hospitals, vital facilities, and critical infrastructure has also attacked the human right to education.
How can students like Salwa continue their studies while struggling with their families to secure the basic necessities of life—shelter, food, and water—amidst destroyed campuses, targeted professors and students, and the collapse of Gaza’s educational system?
Recent reports indicate that nearly 80 percent of university campuses in Gaza have been damaged or destroyed and 88,000 university students have been denied the chance to continue their studies. At the same time, hundreds of academics, professors, and researchers have been killed.
Numbers capture the scale of the devastation, but they cannot tell the whole story.
Human rights and academic literature describe this systematic targeting as “scholasticide”, the deliberate destruction not only of buildings, but of people and of their ability to produce knowledge.
At a time when universities, libraries, and laboratories are under attack, keeping education alive is itself a form of resistance. This is what makes ISNAD distinct: it does not treat education as an isolated sector, but as a cornerstone that connects health, culture, relief, and broader community development.
For students, the daily fight for survival leaves little room for learning. The attacks on universities and libraries are part of a broader policy designed to make Gaza unlivable. As U.N. human rights experts asserted in a statement last year, these attacks are inseparable from wider strategies aimed at erasing Palestinian society and denying its people the right to rebuild their homeland.
And yet, we still hear Salwa’s determination: “Despite all the losses and repeated displacement, I don’t want to lose my dream. I want to continue my path and contribute to rebuilding what has been destroyed.”
Why ISNAD Matters
Salwa’s voice is not an exception. It represents the determination of a generation that sees education as both survival and resistance.
This is why national interventions like ISNAD matter. A project of Taawon (Welfare Association), a leading Palestinian institution supporting education, culture, and community development in Palestine and Lebanon, ISNAD reflects a long-term commitment to investing in people like Salwa.
But ISNAD is not a traditional scholarship programme. It is a collective effort of resilience, a project that sustains students and universities and turns the right to education into an act of survival.
Paying tuition through ISNAD means keeping a university from closing, ensuring a professor is paid, and keeping a classroom alive, even if only online. At a time when universities, libraries, and laboratories are under attack, keeping education alive is itself a form of resistance. This is what makes ISNAD distinct: it does not treat education as an isolated sector, but as a cornerstone that connects health, culture, relief, and broader community development.
ISNAD represents a profound shift from a reality imposed by the war on Gaza, a reality of manufactured death, toward a conscious act of rebuilding hope. This hope does not stop helping a single student or saving one university; it lays the foundation for a philosophy of resilience that goes beyond survival and insists on life in its fullest sense.
Carmen Keshk is a resource development coordinator at Taawon and a programme representative for ISNAD.
Investing in education becomes a way to resist uprooting and erasure, while equipping communities with the tools to endure and rebuild, both physically and morally. In its first year, ISNAD supported 4,574 students in continuing their studies and provided direct assistance to major universities under threat of closure. This support helped pay part of the salaries of hundreds of professors and staff and made it possible for classes to continue online despite blackouts and the collapse of infrastructure.
These achievements may appear small compared to the scale of devastation. Still, they show how even a national initiative can make a real difference amid destruction.
A Call for Solidarity
This is the essence of positive resilience. But for ISNAD to reach its full potential, international solidarity is essential. The destruction of education in Gaza is not a local issue; it is a global human concern, linked to the right to knowledge, academic freedom, and human dignity.
When the international community supports initiatives like ISNAD, when scholars around the world stand alongside Palestinian academics, they help protect Palestinian academics, they help preserve Palestinian institutions from collapse, and restore hope in the face of death. At a time when universities are bombed and libraries and laboratories are destroyed, such support becomes part of Palestinian knowledge itself, resisting erasure and sending a clear message: knowledge can form a global front that resists destruction and insists on life.
To save education in Palestine is to save Salwa and thousands of students like her in Gaza. It is to save the future—the future of Palestinians, and the future of humanity.
Carmen Keshkis a resource development coordinator at Taawon and a programme representative for ISNAD. Her work bridges public institutions, international organisations, and civil society, with a focus on advancing education, academic freedom, and social impact.