For Some in Gaza, International Scholarships Are Lifelines. For Others, Exile.

Haya Abu Hjeer graduated with a degree in computer science in Gaza in 2023 and had dreamed of pursuing a master’s degree. But then, Israel launched its genocide on Gaza, destroying or damaging all 12 universities within the Gaza Strip by May 2024, and killing hundreds of university students and academics.

On July 9, 2024, Abu Hjeer earned a chance to keep pursuing a brighter future: She was accepted for a scholarship at the University of Tuscia in Italy to study artificial intelligence and archival science. She never imagined that the road to college would be paved with such pain; only days after her acceptance, Abu Hjeer’s father and brother were killed in an Israeli attack while they searched for a bag of flour during the famine.

“It was the hardest decision of my life … to leave my mother broken like that,” Abu Hjeer, who is now in Italy, told Prism in a phone interview. “But I felt I had to continue for everyone who’s gone.”

As they fight to survive amid the ruins of Gaza, some students have received scholarships to pursue higher education in European and Arab countries and have been evacuated through border crossings closed to most others.

At first glance, the scholarships appear to be a necessary humanitarian gesture. But behind them lies a difficult question, one that touches not only on education, but also on the future of Palestinian existence itself: Are these scholarships a path to survival, or the beginning of a new wave of migration that will drain Gaza of its youth and talent?

“Scholarships for Gazan students and academics are both a lifeline and a paradox,” Wesam Amer, former dean of the Faculty of Communication and Languages at Gaza University, who is now a visiting professor at the University of Cambridge, told Prism in a written response. “On one hand, they offer vital opportunities to continue learning after everything has been destroyed. On the other, they risk turning education into a pathway of forced academic exile.”

A Question of Survival

Gaza’s entire educational infrastructure has nearly collapsed since the start of the genocide. By July 2024, education had been disrupted for more than 625,000 children after about 93% of school buildings sustained some damage from Israeli attacks, and about 85% required full reconstruction or significant rehabilitation before they would be usable, according to the 2024 Occupied Palestinian Territories Education Cluster report. Between Oct. 7, 2023, and Sept. 2, 2025, Israel killed 17,237 students and 741 teachers, according to the Cluster’s 2025 snapshot.

These figures are not just statistics; they represent a generation deprived of its right to learn, and a society stripped of one of its foundations for survival. Amid this violence and destruction, international scholarships have become one of the few remaining pathways for Palestinian students in Gaza to continue their education.

For Abu Hjeer, that harrowing journey started when she saw a Facebook post about a scholarship at the University of Tuscia, part of the Italian Universities for Palestinian Students program, a government initiative run by the Conference of Italian University Rectors, which this year offered scholarships to 35 Palestinian students from Gaza and the West Bank.

After receiving her acceptance, Abu Hjeer wrote daily to the Italian Consulate in Jerusalem, urging officials there to speed up the evacuation process, so she could escape the genocide with a chance of survival like dozens of other students with foreign scholarships. By late September, the long-awaited call came: Students were to leave at 2 a.m. from a gathering point in southern Gaza, Abu Hjeer recalled.

Dozens of students and their families gathered, preparing for evacuation to Italy, Russia, Belgium, the U.K., and Germany, coordinated by foreign missions and the International Committee of the Red Cross. Accompanied by Red Cross staff and several foreigners, the students boarded buses with a heavy mix of fear and hope.

At Bani Suhaila, a town east of Khan Younis, an Israeli armored vehicle blocked their way and aimed rocket-propelled grenade launchers at them, throwing everyone into panic. The Red Cross withdrew under army orders, leaving the convoy stranded for hours, Abu Hjeer said.

They eventually moved toward the Kerem Shalom crossing, where they were detained and searched. Israeli female soldiers confiscated their small bags and placed their official papers into black garbage bags, Abu Hjeer said.

After a long, exhausting wait, they were allowed to cross through Israel into Jordan. They stayed at the border for seven hours before being transferred to the Italian Hospital in Amman, and from there, flown to Italy aboard a military aircraft—a six-hour journey with no rest.

Abu Hjeer has started her first semester at the University of Tuscia, studying Italian in preparation for her new specialization in artificial intelligence. She is trying to rebuild her future on the ruins of a pain that remains alive in her memory.

“I never imagined studying away from Gaza,” Abu Hjeer said, “but maybe education is the only thing that can bring our lives back after everything that’s been shattered.”

Supporting or Emptying Gaza?

Behind the humanitarian image lies an ongoing academic debate over the meaning and limits of solidarity in a colonial context.

While some see these programs as a chance for academic survival, others fear they may contribute to Gaza’s intellectual depletion, especially amid the blockade and absence of a reconstruction plan or reintegration strategy.

“We study and live here, but our minds are there. The scholarship saved my life, but it stole me from my homeland,” said one international student who did not want to be named due to safety concerns.

Amer said the attack on education is not just about destruction.

“It’s the erasure of a people, their culture, and their future,” he said. He pointed to the bombing of all of the universities in Gaza. Al-Israa University was turned into a military base and later leveled to the ground. “This systematic assault on education—what many call scholasticide … it’s the deliberate silencing of a nation’s capacity to think, to remember, and to rebuild.”

After serving as dean at Gaza University, Amer was evacuated through Egypt and Germany before the Rafah border was closed in May 2024.

“Leaving Gaza was not liberation at all. For me, it was just survival,” he said. “Living abroad feels like psycho-cide: carrying the constant weight of fear and guilt for loved ones still trapped under bombardment and famine, while trying to continue living and working.”

International Initiatives

Several countries have launched emergency programs to evacuate and support Palestinian students.

In Italy, the University Corridors for Refugees program evacuated a group of students and researchers through Jordan to Italian universities as part of a broader scholarship initiative.

In the U.K., several students from Gaza were hosted under fully funded scholarships, including programs such as Chevening.

Other examples include the Universities of Cagliari and Sassari in Sardinia, which offered 10 scholarships worth 12,000 euros, or about $13,800, each to students from Gaza; the Ireland-Palestine Scholarship Programme; and the France Excellence initiative.

Yet despite this solidarity, the struggle to obtain visas and exit permits continues to be a daily battle fought amid blackouts, blockades, and bureaucracy.

The Palestine Education Cluster of the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs reports that hundreds of students granted scholarships abroad remain trapped between borders and visa delays, or lost their documents due to destruction or university shutdowns. Even those accepted often saw their opportunities canceled because of bureaucratic delays.

A Call for More Meaningful Action

But some academics warn that these efforts may become symbolic gestures that ease international pressure without addressing the root problem: the destruction of Gaza’s educational infrastructure.

Amer said that Gaza needs more than just scholarships for some students.

“What Gaza needs is not individual rescue but collective reconstruction—a ‘de-scholasticide’ movement. That means… restoring education inside Gaza, not draining its talents abroad,” he said. “Palestinian universities need strategic rebuilding, not short-term relief. … This isn’t charity—it’s justice.

Universities are the backbone of any future Palestine,” he added. “Supporting them means protecting the right to learn, to think, to exist.”

A report by the Arab Center Washington, D.C., noted that “The US academy must reckon with the reality that offering scholarships to students from Gaza, in lieu of divestment, months into Israel’s genocidal war is too little, too late.”

Many academics within Gaza have expressed a desire to remain in Palestine and reaffirmed calls for a focus on rebuilding scholarship.

“We reaffirm our collective determination to remain on our land and to resume teaching, study, and research in Gaza, at our own Palestinian universities, at the earliest opportunity,” a group of dozens of scholars and administrators wrote in an open letter published in Al Jazeera. “We call upon our friends and colleagues around the world to resist the ongoing campaign of scholasticide in occupied Palestine, to work alongside us in rebuilding our demolished universities, and to refuse all plans seeking to bypass, erase, or weaken the integrity of our academic institutions.”

Editorial Team:
Sahar Fatima, Lead Editor
Carolyn Copeland, Top Editor
Rashmee Kumar, Copy Editor

Prism is an independent and nonprofit newsroom led by journalists of color. We report from the ground up and at the intersections of injustice.