New initiatives aim to provide opportunities for scholars and students in Gaza
Mou’yed Issa Talab Ismail was thrilled when, last month, he received an offer to begin a doctoral program in medical physics at the University of Sherbrooke. “Canada is considered one of the best countries in the world in my field of scientific research,” he says. “This will open the way for me to complete my studies.”
One of several recently launched efforts to support scientists and technical students in war-torn Gaza helped match Ismail with the Canadian program. But throwing a lifeline to Palestinian scholars is proving difficult, and it’s unclear when Ismail will make it to Canada. He is currently sheltering with his family in central Gaza, which has been a frequent target of shelling and airstrikes by the Israeli military since the Israel-Hamas war began nearly 6 months ago. There are no airports in Gaza, only a handful of places where people can go to process visa paperwork, and getting permission to leave Gaza from Israeli authorities can be difficult. Travel is dangerous, communication networks spotty, and survival has become a daily struggle.
Overall, at least 1200 residents of Israel and more than 31,000 residents of Gaza have died in the war, with many more injured. In Gaza, Israeli attacks have likely damaged or destroyed more than half of the region’s buildings, according to the Decentralized Damage Mapping Group, an ad hoc association of academic researchers that uses remote sensing data to analyze the war’s impact. Since Israel launched its ground invasion in late October 2023, all of Gaza’s universities and colleges have been leveled or damaged, and hundreds of teachers and professors, as well as thousands of students, have been killed, according to media reports.
Despite the widespread destruction, and restrictions that Israel has for decades placed on researchers in Gaza, people there maintain a desire to contribute to global science, says Rana Dajani, a Palestinian Jordanian molecular biologist at Hashemite University in Jordan who oversees several educational initiatives in Gaza. “It’s a lack of stability and safety that is stopping science, not a lack of will,” she says.
That sentiment has prompted scientists around the world to call for greater efforts to support Gaza’s researchers and students. Some note that, after Russia’s 2022 invasion of Ukraine, many institutions worldwide welcomed displaced faculty and students and issued pledges to support Ukrainian researchers. But many of those institutions have remained largely silent on the Israel-Hamas war. For example, the government of the United Kingdom offered to expedite visas for Ukrainian nationals and their families, but in December 2023 responded to a petition asking for a similar program for Palestinians by stating that it had “no plans” to create one.
“The response has been uneven across the world, and it’s a very sad, very eye-opening situation,” says Ayman Oweida, a Palestinian cancer immunologist at Sherbrooke. “You would think by now that responding to humanitarian crises would be built into our institutions.”
Oweida’s own response came in January, when he co-founded Palestinian Students & Scholars At Risk (PSSAR), a nonprofit that helps connect Palestinian students interested in studying in Canada with scientists who are looking for postgraduate students. It also links students to groups that provide funding to “scholars at risk.”
During PSSAR’s first 2 months, it has received roughly 150 applications—many more than expected—nearly all from students in Gaza. Oweida says the group is currently working to place an inaugural cohort of 20 to 30 students. Ismail, who was working as a medical physicist at the Palestinian German Diagnostic Center in Gaza City until the war broke out, was the first to be accepted. (Ismail says a friend told him that facility is now ruined.)
Other nonprofits, such as the Illinois-based Reach Education Fund and Oxpal, founded by medical students at the University of Oxford, are also currently fundraising to support displaced Palestinian students.
Many existing programs meant to foster science in Gaza and the West Bank are struggling, however. At the Palestine Academy for Science and Technology in the West Bank, talent exchanges with universities in Canada and Germany are now on hold because of logistical challenges posed by the war. The academy is instead focusing on its Science Explore Program, which taps Palestinian expats to give virtual lectures, says Rana Samara, a Palestinian entomologist at the Palestine Technical University Kadoorie in the West Bank who organizes several of these programs.
The international organization Scientists for Palestine traditionally organized mentoring for students in Gaza and college-level summer schools and conferences in the West Bank. They’ve also had to suspend much of their programming, and many students are now confronting the fact that their documentation—including transcripts and research notes—have been lost or destroyed. The group is working to help students overcome that problem, but “continuing their education has been difficult,” says Deema Totah, a Palestinian American mechanical engineer at the University of Iowa and member of the group.
There is an urgent need to do more to aid Palestinian researchers and students, says Somaya Albhaisi, a physician at Virginia Commonwealth University Health who was born in a refugee camp in Gaza. “Our responsibility as scientists and researchers is to support Palestinian science now,” she recently wrote in The Lancet. That could mean petitioning institutions to offer help, she says, or at the very least inviting Palestinian researchers to collaborate.
Simply checking in on a Palestinian colleague who might be feeling stressed and isolated could also help, says Nirmeen Elmadany, a Palestinian cancer biologist who is currently staying with her in-laws in the United States. She was recently able to move her mother, who has chronic health conditions, from Gaza into Egypt for ongoing care. But the rest of her family remains in a refugee camp in Rafah in southern Gaza, which is expected to be raided by Israeli forces. Few of her colleagues have asked about her well-being, she says. “Every day, morning and night, I’m watching the news to see what is going on,” she says. “Every day I check the names of the martyrs and wonder if one of my family is going to be the next victim.”
Ultimately, Palestinian researchers hope the hostilities will end and the reconstruction of Gaza’s scientific establishment can begin. But for the moment, Albhaisi says, “It’s impossible to make specific plans when people are losing hope, starving, and dying.”