GAZA / PNN / By Farah Samer Zaina
Saadeddin “My injury wasn’t in my control. The changes in my appearance weren’t in my control. The lack of accessible language tests in Gaza is out of my control. Having my passport kept away from me in Ramallah is out of my control,” said Saadeddin Al Hattab, 30, a lawyer from Gaza.
Saadeddin has a bachelor's degree in law from Al Azhar University. He ranked third in his graduating class in 2021 and worked as a teaching assistant for a year. During the war, he worked with international organizations.
He enrolled in a master's program in Human Rights and Multi-Level Governance (HRG) at the University of Padua in Italy. He chose this field because of his passion for international law and human rights.
In May 2025, he received an email congratulating him on being awarded a Padua International Excellence Scholarship Programme. But the university’s admission was conditional on taking an English language test and achieving a B2 level as a minimum score through language tests they have published on their official website, such as IELTS, TOEFL, Pearson, Oxford University Press, Cambridge ESOL, or Trinity College London.
In-person test centers, especially for IELTS and TOEFL, have closed due to the Israeli war in Gaza in 2023 and are only available in Palestine in the West Bank, Nablus, Ramallah, and Hebron, according to Amideast and Study Portals 2026.
During that period of time, Saadeddin said that he could not book a date for TOEFL iBT Home Edition or online IELTS, as he said, “I could not find Gaza in the Palestinian Territories booking dates.”
He had explained the obstacle of the English language tests in Gaza to the university team, and they asked for a Medium of Instruction certificate (MOI) proving his prior education was in English as an alternative to the language test.
After a month, Saadeddin obtained the MOI certificate despite Al Azhar University administrative and teaching staff being shut down. He submitted it to the University of Padua, and they issued him a digital university admission certificate.
Between September and December 2025, the Consulate General in Jerusalem started the evacuation process from Gaza and informed 157 accepted students to gather at Nasser Medical Complex, in the southern Gaza Strip in Khan Younis Governorate, as the meeting point for evacuation, yet Saad wasn’t.
On July 15, 2026, Saadeddin was supposed to have a meeting with the university team. On Jul 13, 2026 during the so-called ceasefire, while bringing some bread from a distribution point in Tel Al-Hawa in Gaza City, Saadeddin was injured by Israeli airstrikes. His injury caused him to receive seven stitches in the head, 11 stitches in his abdomen, and fractures in his hand and injuries to his face.
Despite losing a significant amount of blood, he attended the meeting with his head shaved and still bandaged due to the surgery.
The university team apologized ِand required him to submit one of the required language test results.
After that, Saadeddin transferred his scholarship from the Padua International Excellence Scholarship Programme to the Students at Risk scholarship, which supports students in conflict areas. He believed this would allow the university team to take his circumstances into account. However, they required him to take a language test.
Saadeddin took the risk, booked and paid for the IELTS Online test. According to the IELTS guidelines, test takers are required to show their original physical passport to the examiners before the exam begins to confirm their identity. Saadeddin does not have a passport, and the Examiner refused his ID as an alternative. He lost his test before even starting it. https://ielts.idp.com/legal-notices-ielts-online-terms-conditions?utm=
Since the beginning of the war on October 7, 2023, the Israeli occupation have prevented passports from entering the Gaza Strip; instead, they remain in storage in Ramallah. If anyone wants to issue a new passport or renew one, they receive a digital photo of the first page only, Al Jazeera English, June 30, 2026.
The Palestinian Interior Ministry declared on October 18, 2025, that the mechanism for issuing Palestinian passports is that, after completing the Gaza citizens’ travel procedures to the Arab Republic of Egypt, the citizen would receive the passport from the Embassy of the State of Palestine in Cairo or the Consulate General in Alexandria. The passports would be printed in Ramallah and sent to Egypt for collection.
Saadeddin said that when he emailed the IELTS Center, they replied, “Gaza is a special case. There are many cases in Gaza that have faced the same problem, and we have not found a solution for it, yet.”
Gaza 40 Plus
Nasser Taha, in his thirties and an Iraqi member of the Gaza 40 Plus institution, said that it is a non-profit institution established in 2025 and legally registered in the UK. It brings together more than 1800 students from Gaza in their communities on WhatsApp and 100 volunteers around the world, including France, Spain, Italy, America, the Gaza Strip, the UK, Iraq, India, Pakistan, and more.
Nasser said, “Our volunteers' work includes reaching out to universities, consulates, and scholarship providers by email, social media accounts, and even in person, and putting pressure on them to help evacuate students from Gaza.”
He added that they inform these authorities of the students' status and the obstacles they face in Gaza. “Saadeddin is one of those students we are trying to help, but our efforts are limited because his university admission requires English tests that are not available in Gaza,” Nasser said.
As a solution, “Gaza 40 Plus has partnered with Duolingo, which accepts national ID cards, and provides us with a set of test fee waiver codes to distribute to students in our communities,” Nasser said.
The volunteers translate scholarship materials, provide steps on how to apply, provide recommendation letters to those who deserve them, and offer free online courses in foreign languages.
According to Nasser, the volunteers are fully aware of the hardships students in Gaza face, including living in tents, lack of basic life needs, like electricity, internet connection, water, and the danger of Israeli targeting. “Even psychologically, most if not all of the students have lost someone or something,” he added.
Nasser said, “Our volunteers have personally supported more than 270 students to evacuate Gaza: 200 to Italy, 50 to the UK, and the remaining students distributed to France, Rome, and Spain.”
However, there is still a huge gap between being awarded an education and being able to access it.
2000 scholarship recipients in Gaza “I am not an immigrant, and I don’t demand a thing I don’t have. I demand my right to claim my seat as any international student in the world,” said Abdulrahman Abu Raya, 21, media representative in the student movement initiative “Between the Dream and the Crossings”.
Abdulrahman graduated from high school in Gaza in 2023 with a GPA of 90.1 in the science stream. He said, “ I have gained three fully funded scholarships in Algeria, Russia, and Jordan to study dentistry.”
“I’m not escaping. I have wanted to study abroad even before the war because I may have much wider opportunities than studying in Gaza,” adding, “Gaza now is like death to the mind and soul due to destruction in the education infrastructure and environment.”
According to UNESCO, on November 18, 2025, 95% of campuses in the Gaza Strip have been affected, including 22 campuses that are completely destroyed and 14 campuses that have sustained different levels of damage, while the damage cost assessment in higher education is USD 373,246,774.
Abdulrahman has waited three years to seek his education abroad only to realize that securing a scholarship is the first step and leaving Gaza is the real challenge, while Israel continues to impose restrictions on students leaving Gaza through the Rafah crossing.
In April 2026, Abdulrahman, along with 17 other students who have all secured scholarships and university admissions in countries around the world, launched the Student Movement Between the Dream and the Crossings.
According to the movement, those students have released an online form and collected data from more than 2,000 scholarship recipients from the Gaza Strip in 55 countries. These data include bachelor's, master's, and PhD students who are unable to leave the Strip to continue their studies abroad.
Students in this movement advocate for their rights through appeals, sit-ins, demonstrations, media campaigns, and sharing their personal stories on the movement’s media accounts, like their Instagram account, hera_k1.
According to Abdulrahman, despite all their effort, they have not solved the case of trapped students. He said, “Our data includes about 300 students who have scholarships from Algeria, but no one has evacuated. We received emails at the end of August 2026 that the Algerian scholarships have been canceled.”
He also said, “We have created movements to stand up for our rights, but we cannot do it alone. So, when will human rights organizations and governments wake up and take some action?”
