Tawjihi Under Fire: The Resilience of Gaza’s Students
by Taqwa Ahmed Al-Wawi
The final year of high school in Palestine, known as Tawjihi, has always symbolized more than just exams. It’s a year of dreams, a year in which every student’s aspirations meet their family’s ambitions. The future of a nation rests on the shoulders of our generation. But in Gaza, Tawjihi has become a test of survival.
In my Tawjihi in 2023, just as we were about to take our final exams, our world was overturned. Between May 9th and May 13th Israel’s airstrikes, named Operation Shield and Arrow, escalated with unbearable force, with no relief in sight. Explosions, ceaseless bombardment, planes that shadowed us like dark birds. Exams felt distant, almost irrelevant. Homes were shattered. Streets became unrecognizable. We were unsure whether our loved ones would make it through another day.
Against all the odds, we didn’t give up. That year, not one, but ten students from Gaza led the whole of Palestine in the Tawjihi exams. My close friend, Shimaa Saidam, scored the highest grade in Palestine — 99.6%. In Gaza, the day that Tawjihi results are announced makes you forget the exhaustion of twelve long years. Families, friends, and neighbors gather, holding their breath. I scored 98%, and both Shimaa and I were honored in many celebrations, bathed in pride and joy.
Then came October 7th, 2023. Gaza held its breath. The sky turned gray, and life froze. Education was just one casualty of what followed, not just for the Tawjihi students but for every child. The spaces where we had laughed and learned were now either destroyed or filled with displaced families. On October 15, 2023, Shimaa was martyred.
For many students, survival now took priority over studying. Some fled to makeshift shelters; teachers — no longer in their classrooms — tried to reach out to them through the internet or by meeting in places they believed might be safe. But safety was an illusion.
My class of 2023, born in 2005—the last to face Tawjihi under somewhat normal conditions—passed our exams under unimaginable stress. But for the class of 2024, born in 2006, books were replaced by buckets, cooking pots, long lines at aid kitchens. Some students became the heads of their families, fetching water, gathering firewood, and walking miles to get food.
Then came the Tawjihi class of 2025. The genocide swallowed their school year whole before it even began. No classrooms, no desks, no lessons—just an endless cycle of fear, hunger, and loss.
And still, they try. Even as their lives collapse around them, many students cling to their ambitions. Some have lost parents, families, everything they once knew. Others live in overcrowded shelters with nothing but a notebook and a few pages of notes. In the corners of these shelters, students review lessons, memorize equations, by candlelight.
Our classrooms are empty, but our minds remain alive. Students in Gaza understand that education is more than a right—it’s a form of resistance. While bombs tear apart our buildings, they cannot destroy our will. In a world that offers us nothing but destruction, we still choose to learn. We are survivors. We are dreamers. We are fighters.
By mid-January 2025, the Ministry of Education in Gaza reported that Israel had killed 13,054 students and injured 21,320 others. Israel had murdered 657 teachers and school staff, and left 3,904 wounded.
The true cost of Israel’s genocide is measured not in rubble, but in the dreams of thousands of students and their families, in the lost futures of a generation.
On June 22, 2025, in the West Bank, students born in 2007 sat for their first Tawjihi exam. In Gaza, students a year older, born in 2006, have not even had the chance to begin. As students across the world celebrate the closing of a chapter, we in Gaza are trapped in an unending hell— struggling daily for something that remains out of reach.
Despite Israel’s scholasticide in Gaza, the Ministry of Education and Higher Education announced on June 29, 2025, the official start of preparations to hold three phases of Tawjihi exams electronically for students in the Gaza Strip. The first phase will begin on July 17 and 19 for students of the class of 2023 (born in 2005), followed by the second phase for the class of 2024 (born in 2006), and then the third phase for the class of 2025 (born in 2007). Special arrangements for private study students will be announced later.
Because in Gaza, even as the sky falls, hope survives. Students in this city are not defined by the bombs that Israel rains on us, but by the courage that rises in our hearts. Knowledge is a light no genocide can extinguish.
TAQWA AHMED AL-WAWI is a second-year English Literature student at the Islamic University of Gaza, and a contributor to We Are Not Numbers. Her work has appeared in The Electronic Intifada, Mondoweiss, The Washington Report on Middle East Affairs, The Palestine Chronicle, The Markaz Review, Middle East Monitor, Al Jazeera, and Middle East Eye. Her poetry has been published by the Gaza Poets Society. You can find her on Instagram @taqwa2006ahmed