In Gaza, studying lets you 'not think about death all the time'
Narmin al-Zeitonia earned her bachelor's degree in agricultural science in early May, graduating at the top of her class at Gaza's Al-Azhar University. Yet the university, just like the other 11 higher education institutions in the Gaza Strip, had been reduced to rubble by Israeli bombings in the fall of 2023.
After having been damaged three times by previous Israeli offensives, the agriculture department in which Narmin had attended her classes – which had recently been rebuilt, thanks to a donation from the king of Morocco – was completely destroyed this time. Despite this, the 23-year-old student managed to continue her studies, thanks to an online teaching program launched by the three main universities in the Palestinian enclave – Al-Azhar, Al-Aqsa, and the Islamic University of Gaza – in the summer of 2024
In the first six months of the war in Gaza, after it was triggered by the Hamas terrorist attack of October 7, 2023, the entire education sector was paralyzed by chaos. Three university heads, hundreds of professors and thousands of students were killed, while the rest – just like all of Gaza's population – were displaced, following evacuation orders by the Israeli army. All of a sudden, nearly 90,000 students saw their academic careers interrupted.
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Le Figaro
4 days ago
- Le Figaro
At the Arab World Institute: Gaza's Rescued Treasures, Witnesses to a Deep History
The Paris museum is reopening the crates of ancient artifacts unearthed in the Palestinian territory. For years, this heritage has been in exile in Geneva due to the conflict with Israel. A Byzantine mosaic with an animal theme welcomes visitors to the Arab World Institute (IMA) in Paris. Among the depictions of exotic wild animals, a rabbit attempts to climb a palm tree. This is just about the only joyful note in this exhibition of Gaza's rescued treasures. Among the amphorae, statuettes, funerary steles, clay oil lamps and enormous stone anchors and mooring rings, a beautiful Aphrodite stands out. This white marble statue sits alongside a translucent alabaster vase adorned with lotuses, as well as a stunning treasure of 17,000 pieces of agglomerated silver. This currency was in use during the Byzantine period. À lire aussi It's Official: Wealth Comes at the Cost of Sleep These 130 artifacts are the result of joint Franco-Palestinian excavations undertaken in 1995 on the coastal strip, following the Oslo Accords. The excavations were led by the local antiquities service and the École biblique et archéologique française de Jérusalem (EBAF), which was founded in 1890 and is the oldest research center in these fields in the Holy Land. An exile that began in 2000 Some artifacts also come from the collection of Jawdat Khoudary, a Palestinian who made his fortune in the construction industry. He donated his entire collection to the Palestinian National Authority in 2018. In 2023, when the bombings in response to Hamas' terrorist attack began, most of it was housed in his villa in northern Gaza. It was a private museum, the only one in the area, pending the construction of a public museum. The Israeli army turned it into a command base and transformed the garden into a tank depot. More than 4,000 objects, including an avenue of columns and capitals, are missing or seriously damaged, according to a cartel. What we see at the IMA, however, was safely preserved in crates which were stored at the Geneva Freeport. The exile of this lot began in 2000. While they were waiting to join the future public museum in Gaza, the artifacts were on embassy tours to various European museums, including the IMA. When, after Hamas seized power in the enclave in 2006, the blockade prevented their return there, the Geneva Museum of Art and History, the site of their final stop, took charge of their conservation. À lire aussi The Astonishing Life of Nude Models, Heirs to an Artistic Tradition in Decline 'These pieces are survivors,' says Jean-Baptiste Humbert, a prominent figure among the Dominican friars, who led the excavations from their beginnings until the end of 2023. Humbert notably presided over the discovery of Anthedon, a fortified port dating back to the 8th century BC. 'The extent of the damage caused by recent bombardments is unknown,' the statement reads as we walk past the photos and plans of the site. 'All this heritage is in transit or exile, like most Gazans,' comment scenographers Elias and Yousef Anastas, Palestinian architects living between Paris and Bethlehem. To convey this notion, they created wheeled display stands for these treasures. 'You have before you the witnesses of some five thousand years of history,' says Élodie Bouffard, head of exhibitions at the IMA and curator of this event. Since the Bronze Age, Gaza has been an oasis at the crossroads of maritime and caravan routes. Three hundred sites of heritage interest have been identified there. The influence of multiple civilizations was evident: Canaanite, Egyptian, Philistine, Neo-Assyrian, Babylonian, Persian, Hellenistic, Roman, Byzantine and Arab. This represents 365 square kilometers of trade and prosperity punctuated by wars and humanitarian crises. 94 points of historical, cultural or religious interest, damaged or ravaged As with the foundations of the port of Anthédon, the Saint Hilarion monastery with its fabulous Paradise mosaic — a site UNESCO included on its list of World Heritage in Danger in the summer of 2024 — or Qasr al-Basha, the Pasha's Palace, a relic of the 13th century, where Napoleon Bonaparte slept for a few nights during his Egyptian campaign, a physical inventory is being compiled as much as possible. The EBAF warehouse itself is under rubble, along with its archives, shards and papers alike. Was there looting? No one knows, not even René Elter, Jean-Baptiste Humbert's successor. Maps on the walls give the full measure of the tragedy. On March 25, based on satellite images, UNESCO inventoried 94 damaged or ravaged sites of historical, cultural or religious interest. There's an immense contrast between the apocalypse depicted in recent photographs and the previously unpublished pictures of the Gaza oasis at the beginning of the 20th century. These are modern prints from the EBAF's collection of glass plates, documenting life between 1905 and 1926. Has October 7, 2023, also destroyed this deep history? Fortunately, many have deployed great energy to preserve this history, including the 40 students of Intiqal ('transmission' in Arabic). Since 2017, this program has been implemented in Palestine by the NGO Première Urgence Internationale, with the support of EBAF, the French Development Agency, the British Council and the Aliph Foundation, the world's leading fund dedicated to the protection or rehabilitation of heritage weakened by war, climate change or natural disasters. Nothing will be easy in this area, where two-thirds of the buildings are in ruins and their surroundings are not yet safe. But everyone believes it's not impossible. 'Rescued Treasures from Gaza: 5000 Years of History,' at the Arab World Institute (Paris 5th arrondissement), until November 2. Tel.: +33 1 40 51 38 38.
AFP
13-06-2025
- AFP
Old explosion video falsely linked to Israeli strikes on Iran
"BREAKING: ANOTHER EXPLOSION AT AN OIL REFINERY IN IRAN," says a June 13, 2025 post sharing the visual on X. Image Screenshot from X taken June 13, 2025 The post comes from Sulaiman Ahmed, a self-described journalist who has repeatedly shared disinformation about the Middle East and the war between Israel and Hamas. Similar posts spread across platforms and in other languages, including Spanish and Persian. The image circulated after the Israeli military hit a range of Iranian nuclear sites, in an of Israel's war with the militant group Hamas in Gaza. Oil prices soared in the aftermath of the airstrikes. But analysts told AFP price gains were capped in part by news that there has been no immediate reduction to crude production or supplies, as the strikes appeared to have avoided Iranian oil facilities. Reverse image searches surfaced the photo in Iranian news reports detailing a November 4, 2020 incident at a petrochemical plant in Ilam, Iran (archived here and here). Rokna News Agency posted the photo to Telegram, saying it showed a "massive explosion" at the plant (archived here). Further reports said the plume of smoke was in fact due to a fire in a waste pond that was quickly extinguished with no casualties (archived here, here and here). AFP has debunked other misinformation about the Middle East, here.
France 24
11-06-2025
- France 24
Child survivor of Gaza family strike heads to Italy
Adam and his mother, paediatrician Alaa al-Najjar, were due to fly to Milan in northern Italy on Wednesday evening alongside his aunt and four cousins, Foreign Minister Antonio Tajani said. "Adam will arrive in Milan and will be admitted to the Niguarda (hospital), because he has multiple fractures and he will be treated there," Tajani told Rtl radio. A plane carrying Palestinians in need of medical care is scheduled to land at 7:30 pm (1730 GMT) at Milan's Linate airport, according to the foreign ministry. Adam had a hand amputated and suffered severe burns across his body following the strike on the family house in the city of Khan Yunis on May 23. His mother was at work when the bomb hit the house, killing nine of her children and injuring Adam and his father, doctor Hamdi al-Najjar, who died last week. Al-Najjar, who ran to the house to find her children charred beyond recognition, told Italy's Repubblica daily: "I remember everything. Every detail, every minute, every scream." "But when I remember it's too painful, so I try to keep my mind focused entirely on Adam," she said in an interview published Wednesday ahead of their arrival. Asked by his mother during the interview to describe his hopes, Adam said he wanted to "live in a beautiful place". "A beautiful place is a place where there are no bombs. In a beautiful place the houses are not broken and I go to school," he said, according to La Repubblica. "Schools have desks, the kids study their lessons but then they go play in the courtyard and nobody dies. "A beautiful place is where they operate on my arm and my arm works again. In a beautiful place my mother is not sad. They told me that Italy is a beautiful place." Al-Najjar said she has packed the Koran, their documents and Adam's clothes. "I am heartbroken. I am leaving behind everything that was important to me. My husband, my children, the hospital where I worked, my job, my patients," she said. "People are dying of hunger. If not of hunger, of bombs. We would just like to live in peace," she told the daily. The October 7, 2023 Hamas attack that triggered the war resulted in the deaths of 1,219 people on the Israeli side, mostly civilians, according to an AFP tally of official figures. The health ministry in Hamas-run Gaza says at least 54,981 people, the majority civilians, have been killed in the territory since the start of the war. The UN considers these figures reliable.
