GAZA'S. -PALESTINIAN STUDENTS- GAZES : MASTER PAIN ESSAY

 

WAFA KHATER, 49, grew up in the West Bank, an area west of the Jordan River that has been occupied by Israel since 1967. She moved to Norway, to pursue her Ph.D. in physics at the University of Bergen.

She had an opportunity to stay in Norway permanently but moved back to the West Bank to teach in the early aughts, during the Palestinians second uprising against the Israeli occupation.

'' All my Norwegian colleagues at the time told me, '' Are you crazy? ' '' she recalled. '' But I told them, '' It's home, and I am on a mission.' ''

Now a professor at Birzeit University. Dr. Khater is one of the first Palestinians to pursue a career studying the nature and behaviour of subatomic particles :

'' Many people have never imagined that there is science going on in Palestine,'' she said.

The absence of a healthy research community in the Israeli-occupied West Bank limits her opportunities for scientific collaboration, she added, so she has sought to build a network.

She has invited European colleagues  to speak at West Bank universities, and pushed the Palestinian students to attend research programs abroad.

Theoretical research can flourish in the West Bank, but '' experimental physics has almost no chance,'' she said.

Universities struggle to pay for laboratory equipment and infrastructure, she explained,  and rely on donations.

Birzeit's observatory, was endowed by Ramez Hakim, a Palestinian American businessman.

'' It was the first time that our students could see a telescope and look up to the sky,'' Dr. Khater said.

Even when funding is secured, experimental tools can be difficult to import into the West Bank and Gaza, because some equipment needed for research can also be used for military purposes.

Israel classifies such goods as ''dual use '' and requires civilians in the Palestinian territories to obtain permission to procure them.

After the Oct 7 attack, Dr. Khatter and other faculty members at her university began teaching remotely. Increased checkpoints in the West Bank, a result of heightened Israeli military presence after Hamas's attack, made it difficult for students and professors to attend class in person, she said.

Limited face-to-face instructions resumed last spring. But then in October, Shortly after Iran launched a missile attack on Israel that caused shrapnel to fall over the West Bank, Birzeit announced that teaching and administrative duties would be moved online for safety.

Dr. Khater spent the summer teaching an online physics course for students in the Gaza strip.  Nineteen students registered, she said, but more than half dropped out because they lacked stable electricity or internet access.

'' I don't belong to any political party in Palestine,'' Dr.Khater said. '' But the situation affects us in every single part of our lives.''

She feels it is her duty to teach the next generation of Palestinian scientists, who may otherwise lack a connection to the outside world.

'' We want to do science,'' she said. '' The same as everybody else.''

The World Students Society thanks Katrina Miller.