Gaza Goes Back to School

Geoff Bennett:

In Gaza, more than half-a-million students are back in school after three years of war in which an estimated 22000 children lost their lives. The picture has been especially bleak for postsecondary education, which has been virtually nonexistent since the start of the war in Gaza.

Special correspondent Fred de Sam Lazaro now on an unusual partnership trying to fill part of the void.

Fred de Sam Lazaro:

In an education system limping back through rubble, the Gaza Children Village has for months been an island of some stability. And now it’s one of the strip’s largest network of schools with some 22,000 students.

David Hasan, Founder, Gaza Children Village:

How did it happen? I told you, I don’t know, but it happened.

Fred de Sam Lazaro:

Palestinian-American neurosurgeon David Hasan came to Gaza late in 2023 as a volunteer. Pediatric cases, in particular, moved him, he says, enough to venture way beyond his normal expertise.

David Hasan:

I encountered so many orphans, so I made determination to focus on the kids.

Fred de Sam Lazaro:

Their most pressing need was education, but it needed to be in an environment that actually enabled learning, beginning with nutrition.

Chef Jose Andres’ World Central Kitchen partnered to provide that. Then there were myriad health care needs, from routine to trauma care to post-traumatic stress.

David Hasan:

We have on-site clinic with a physician, pediatrician, and nurses, psychotherapy, and then the education.

Fred de Sam Lazaro:

He’s navigated the intense ideological polarization and the shooting war, he says, but found surprising receptivity all round to a curriculum that promised to stick to the basics and be free of bias.

David Hasan:

The condition one is not to brainwash our kids. And the second condition…

Fred de Sam Lazaro:

Meaning not the Israelis brainwashing our kids.

David Hasan:

Exactly, and not to side way with Hamas.

Woman:

Another example.

Fred de Sam Lazaro:

Still, his plans to record classes and use artificial intelligence to flag what he calls inciteful speech has raised concern among Palestinian advocacy groups over privacy and safety.

Another source of concern is his source of support, which he insists is strictly focused on the education mission.

David Hasan:

All my funding until recently is 100 percent Israelis and Jewish people who really wanted to help the kids of Gaza.

Fred de Sam Lazaro:

His friendship with many American Jews over the years enabled connections to Israelis. And as he looked to serve older students, he was introduced to Israeli-American entrepreneur Shai Reshef.

Woman:

Hi, everyone.

Fred de Sam Lazaro:

Reshef founded the University of the People, a nonprofit online school that has a quarter-of-a-million students across the globe. Its degrees are now accredited in the United States. Students attend tuition-free, although fees can add up to about $5,000 for a bachelor’s degree. However, many of those enrolled receive scholarships, and Gaza students will attend entirely free.

Shai Reshef:

We have 50,000 refugees from around the world, but we couldn’t get into Gaza. We didn’t know how to find the students, how to reach them, until we were introduced to David.

Fred de Sam Lazaro:

So far, they have enrolled 250 students. While grateful for the opportunity, they face daunting handicaps.

My Gaza colleague Shams Odeh talked to computer science and engineering student Ahmed Sabah. He used to have his own room. Now he shares a tent with eight family members.

Ahmed Sabah, Student:

You struggle to find electricity. You struggle to find quite a place to study at. You struggle to find the — you have to survive first. Then you think to educate yourself. I don’t want my life to be just a mere survival. I want to continue education.

Fred de Sam Lazaro:

Hassan Sharif is pursuing a degree in business administration.

Hassan Sharif, Student:

More than 100,000 of students, despite their ages, have been prevented from having the courses face to face, so they look to the alternatives, which is the online. And it’s very hard to find the Internet.

Fred de Sam Lazaro:

Unstable Internet connections marked the video call I had with other students like Oday Murtajah.

Oday Murtajah, Student:

I’m supposed to be in my prime years, but I’m spending most of my prime years in line for bread, line for water, line for food. In general, this has been a major impact on my education.

Iman Balousha, University of the People: They are disparate.

Fred de Sam Lazaro:

Iman Balousha is a professor of education and a school principal in a system that she says has been defined by scarcity and insecurity.

Do you fear that many young people will leave Gaza?

Iman Balousha:

Yes, of course, my daughter lived a year ago to Italy. And all of the students in the — in her age, they want to go outside and to start to get out of the hell of Gaza.

Fred de Sam Lazaro:

But Shai Reshef, who’s raising funds to enroll up to 10,000 Gazan students, says having a U.S.-accredited degree will open doors for them in Gaza, as it has in Afghanistan and other conflict zones.

Shai Reshef:

We have over 7,000 Afghan women studying with us; 60 percent of the graduates work remotely as programmers with international companies. And that’s the future that we will offer David’s students in Gaza, to work with international companies or start their own business.

Fred de Sam Lazaro:

Ironically, Dr. Hasan himself has had to work remotely here, no longer able to set foot in Gaza after venturing beyond his operating room duties.

You looked for hostages in the hospitals.

David Hasan:

Hospital, correct, the first trip and then the second trip. And that’s why I couldn’t go after April of 2024.

Fred de Sam Lazaro:

He’s been called an Israeli spy. Still, his learning centers have mostly been able to operate without interruption, he says, likely because of the service they provide.

David Hasan:

And the only time it becomes problematic is when some wannabe journalist on social media, they stir things up, they embarrass Hamas. You’re allowing this guy who is a Mossad agent to operate. And I have to deal with it.

What’s important for us is, we are creating, as I have said, An ecosystem.

Fred de Sam Lazaro:

He calls it a peace-friendly curriculum. Israel schools largely ignore Palestinian history, he adds, and Palestinian history books emphasize grievance, beginning with the Nakba, or displacement, at Israel’s founding in 1948.

David Hasan:

One of the things we teach our kids is, yes, the Nakba, Palestinian Nakba, is a fact; 850,000 Palestinians were displaced. But around that time, 850,000, 900,000 Jewish were displaced, where they had roots in the Arab countries thousands of years, Morocco, Egypt, Yemen, Iraq, Syria, even West Bank.

So when you show that the students on both sides, yes, and talk about these things, I think you can build empathy.

Fred de Sam Lazaro:

Something Shai Reshef says happens organically in his school.

Shai Reshef:

When you study with the University of the People, every course you take, you find 20 people from 20 different countries.

And, deliberately, we will have Israeli study with an Arab, Pakistani with Indian, someone from Turkey with someone from Greece, to teach them that the people who are considered to be your enemies outside of the class are probably the closest to you in terms of culture.

Fred de Sam Lazaro:

Education reform is key to a sustainable peace, they say. It may seem naive in today’s political reality, but so did the idea that a school system that feeds, treats, and teaches 22,000 students could be built from scratch in 18 months.

For the “PBS News Hour,” I’m Fred de Sam Lazaro.