“In Palestine, as a student, you don’t live a normal life,” Sundos Hammad, coordinator of the Right to Education (R2E) campaign at Birzeit University in the occupied West Bank, told the Canary.
You go to university not knowing if there will be a raid of your campus, if you will be arrested or harassed at the checkpoint leading to your university, if one of your loved ones or friends will be imprisoned or killed.
The Israeli occupation has been systematically targeting education since the Nakba of 1948 because it plays an important role in helping Palestinians build their community and preserve their collective identity. This also means a strong student movement inside campuses, which helps resist the occupation.
Between 1972, when it was founded, and 1988, Birzeit University was closed 15 times by military orders. Many students and faculty members were imprisoned by the Israeli occupation during this time.
Birzeit University’s founder and first president, Dr Hanna Nasir, was expelled to Lebanon by the Israeli occupation in 1974, and then to Jordan with no charges. He was not permitted to return to Palestine until after the Oslo Agreement.
But Hammad stresses that, despite all the odds, Palestinians continue their education because it is their “tool of existence”, their way out of occupation and towards liberation.
Education in Palestine is fraught with risks
In the first uprising in 1988, all schools, universities and even nurseries were closed by military orders, and education was illegal for Palestinians.
When they went to school holding a book or backpack, they were threatened with being investigated or put in an Israeli occupation prison. But students and academics of Palestinian universities did not stop. Instead, they held an underground system of education, where they held classes in student houses, rented apartments, churches and mosques. There were even instances of lectures being held in cars.
During this time, Birzeit University campus was closed for 51 consecutive months.
During the Second Intifada, there was a checkpoint on the Birzeit Ramallah road, which meant students had to walk 14km to reach Birzeit campus. They endured the walk so they could continue their education.
‘What if one of our students got killed…?’
The R2E campaign emerged in 1988. Its main aim back then was to break the isolation of higher education institutions, and document and monitor violations against students, staff and faculty members of Birzeit University.
Crimes against students are rampant and Hammad is fearful for their safety.
Israel is an occupying force. They carried out a genocide in Gaza and no one stopped them. Even the International Court of Justice said it is a genocide in Gaza and they must stop, but they haven’t. No one is holding them accountable so they can come to our campus and invade it anytime.
It is the students’ right to be educated in safety and it makes me really sad to see that the students have to live with this fear of being on campus. I sometimes think, ‘What if one of our students got killed in an invasion by live ammunition?’ Things would then go really terrible.
It’s really dangerous. It’s only a matter of time.
Birzeit University became a ‘war zone’ in January 2026
Two people were seriously injured in the last raid on 6 January this year when more than 200 soldiers fired live ammunition at terrified students.
The Israeli occupation shot at students, threw stun grenades and sound bombs. About 8,000 students were on campus at the time — 40 were injured and 11 were hospitalised. Nine of them were shot with live ammunition.
Hammad said the university had been turned into a “war zone”.
Some of the soldiers stayed at the door of the university’s health clinic, so the medical team couldn’t come out and help the injured students. They also didn’t let ambulances come in for half an hour.
There were terrible injuries in the bodies of the students. One student had a bullet come out from his abdomen. He has had four surgeries so far. The other bullet exploded in his elbow and he had to have metal in his arm, so he could move it. He was about to graduate but has had to stop his studies until he recovers and is able to return.
Birzeit University campus has been raided 26 times since 2002 and five times since October 2023. These raids often happen in the middle of the night and involve the invasion of the buildings of the student council.
January’s raid was similar to the one in March 2018, in that it took place in the middle of the day when students were on campus. In 2018, special forces of the Israeli occupation infiltrated campuses disguised as student journalists.
They made their way to the student council room and kidnapped its president, who was then imprisoned for four-and-a-half years.
Aysar Safi: Shot in his neck then stood on until he died
There have been 40 martyrs from Birzeit University. The first was assassinated by an Israeli soldier in the old campus during a 1984 demonstration because he was holding a Palestinian flag.
In May 2024, during a demonstration on Nakba day, an occupation soldier shot 19-year-old student, Aysar Safi, in the neck. When his colleagues tried to take him to an ambulance, a soldier callously stood on his body until he died.
Remembering Safi, Hammad said:
He was always smiling and full of life, it was so sad for the university students. Aysar was also helping his mother as his father and brother, who was also a student, were both in prison. His mother was dreaming of his graduation.
Nearly 160 students from Birzeit University are currently being held in Israeli occupation prisons. More than 75 of those, including two female students and two academics, are being held under administrative detention, with no charge or trial — some for three or four years.
Before 7 October 2023, the average annual number of arrests would be about 55 or 60, but numbers have escalated considerably.
Just since yesterday until today we have had six students from Birzeit University imprisoned — four yesterday and two today — so far.
The R2E campaign documents student detention and imprisonment and provides students who have been arrested with a free lawyer.
Before the Gaza genocide began, Hammad said that when students were released from prison, they were very open to speaking out. The campaign documented the violations they experienced during their imprisonment and wrote reports that went to the UN Human Rights Council.
But now, most students refuse to speak about what happened to them. Not only do they not want to remember their time in prison, they are also afraid of speaking out and being re-arrested. They are traumatised from the abuse and neglect in the Israeli occupation’s prisons.
Unfortunately, this silence is what the occupation wants.
Students face threats of rearrest if they return to education
When these students leave prison, through the R2E campaign, the university helps them continue their education. They are able to return to their studies at the point they left off and sit any incomplete exams.
Although, since October 2023, there have been four instances of students who have wanted to continue their education but faced threats of being rearrested if they do. Afraid, those students are now trying to receive online teaching instead.
Hammad explained that everything is censored by the Israeli occupation.
Our phones, our social media, everything. There’s even an Israeli Army captain who monitors Birzeit university. Students get threatening messages from him, saying to stay away from any activism inside campus.
When the university campus is invaded, multiple times we have found [his] card stuck in the walls or the places that were invaded. It’s really terrible because we live under military rule. Every university has someone like [him].
Students affiliated to political parties inside campus are the most targeted by the occupation. This is because the Israeli occupation considers Palestinian student political parties to be illegal, terrorist groups.
Believe me, sometimes students do not know about their history because the school textbooks are really monitored. But we believe it’s our job to raise awareness about this, and the role of students in changing the status quo regarding the right to education, and what it means to have your full rights and access to education.
The R2E campaign empowers its student volunteers by providing them with training and workshops, and engaging them in many events, locally and internationally. This knowledge helps raise their awareness and empowers them to speak out about what is happening in Palestine and their own experiences living under occupation and settler colonialism.
They also speak about scholasticide, described by the UN as the “systemic obliteration of education through the arrest, detention or killing of teachers, students and staff, and the destruction of educational infrastructure”.
Activists globally give hope to students in Palestine
During the Campus Voices for Palestine events in both 2024 and 2025, organised by University and College Workers for Palestine (UCW4P) and the British Committee for the Universities of Palestine (BRICUP), Birzeit University’s Right to Education campaign delivered talks across the UK. These were a call to action for all British students and educators in solidarity with Palestine, to end the complicity of their universities in the oppression of Palestinians.
As a grassroots campaign, Hammad told us R2E believes change comes from the bottom up, so they work with the people to change the status quo. Although its work is driven by students, the impact is huge because the students believe in what they are doing.
Explaining the importance of the campaign and Palestinian education in general, she said:
“It’s so much easier to control ignorant people so education has become a tool for resisting the status quo, of resisting the occupation of our knowledge. It’s what keeps us on the land and enables us to persist on our right to exist, to return, to be liberated, and all human rights.
It is also the main tool to preserve our Palestinian identity and a form of resistance, to say to our occupier that we exist and we are not going anywhere. We will not be ignorant about our own history or our land. It is part of our resilience and existence as Palestinians, and it is also about self-determination.
How are we going to have our own sovereignty if we aren’t educated? For all these reasons, the occupation will not succeed in demolishing our education system, although they are really trying to. Education will continue against all the odds!
Featured image via Global Campus of Human Rights
By Charlie Jaay
This post was originally published on Canary.