Education will return to Gaza from the displacement camps in the Strip, the Minister of Education and Higher Education in the Palestinian Authority government, Amjad Barham, said yesterday.
“The educational situation in the Gaza Strip is tragic, and the Israeli occupation wants to destroy the future in the souls of our children.”
“We decided that educational life would return to the Gaza Strip through displacement tents despite the random bombing, through e-learning for all students present in Gaza and outside it, and that the high school exams would be held, which is one of the most difficult challenges,” he added.
He called for providing the necessary support for the educational process in Palestine and thwarting the occupation’s plans to target this important aspect of life, as students are the building blocks of a new generation, he explained.
Barham said that “Out of 309 schools, 290 had been destroyed, while the remainder were repurposed as refuges for the displaced,” noting that “Educational sites belonging to the UN Palestinian refugee agency UNRWA were not safe from Israel’s war on Gaza, however, many have become displacement facilities.”
“Eighty per cent of universities have been destroyed and 630,000 students are unable to access education,” he continued, adding: “We lost 9,500 of them [students] to the Israeli aggression,” the minister said, with 15,000 wounded, including 5,000 who have been disabled because of the “continuation of this aggression and the fierce war on our people.”
He said 19,000 students headed to Egypt and that attempts were being made to allow them to finish their education there