Muhammad Juma Khattab walks past the series of cars, trucks and carts and is waiting at a control point to enter the Netzarim corridor in Gaza. The 80-year-old professor leans on a walking stick, light on a walk, but his face was determined with determination to achieve his goal.
The wrinkles in his face ran deep, the proof of a long life that he calls his “tragic journey”. The professor, born in 1945, saw many wars in this country and between trips abroad for work and school education, the changes that it went through.
But today, dressed in a dark blue blazer, a brown trousers and a naval sweater, the pharmacy professor makes his way back to the university, where he taught before the war: al-Azhar University.
“I came to see how you destroyed this region,” he told CBC Freevelance Video Mohamed El Saife. He points to his backpack filled with branches that he had collected from the remains of the school.
United nations experts are “deeply concerned about” Scholasticide “in Gaza,” said the organization, the organization said In a press release in April 2024With regard to the destruction of Israel’s educational areas in his war against Hamas. The office called it a “deliberate effort” to destroy the Palestinian education system. According to official Palestinian data, all 12 university institutions of Gaza were destroyed or damaged.
In a statement on CBC News, the Israeli defense forces (IDF) described the school allegations as “unfounded and deeply unfounded”. At the Al-Azhar University, the military said that there were weapons such as rocket parts and explosives as well as a tunnel that led to a nearby school and was found on the campus. This means that Hamas had used the facility to attack Israeli troops.
Return to campus
The streets become barren the closer Khattab gets on the campus. Rümmer is everywhere, the effect of the war leaving the country a gray-brown. With his walking stick, he has on campus, which used to be different places – now mainly ruins – on the campus.
“This is what remains of the university only one building,” he says. It once organized scientific conferences, he says El Saife.
In the last 15 months of the war, the schools and universities were left by Gaza in rubble. The former biochemical professor Muhammed Khattab took a CBC freelancer to see what is left of al-Azhar University and to try to save everything he could.
A concrete fence that once surrounded the university is now only partially partially and has been sprayed with Hebrew graffiti. Some of them are sports chants, other military brigade names – all sorts of signs of who joined the campus during the war.
Khattab received his doctorate in chemistry, biochemistry and pharmacy from Ruhr University Bochum in Germany in 1973. He finally said he came back, he is visibly excited when he remembers US President Donald Trump’s recent comments on the takeover of Gaza.
“Please don’t believe what Trump said we will never go out of this country,” he said. “Our roots are very deep.”
Trump made the Palestinians and Arab leaders angry Suggest suggestions from the United States to take over GazaReplace its population and transform them into what he called “Riviera of the Middle East”. According to his plan, the Palestinians would not have the right to return.
The first phase of the Israel-Hamas armistice Strip is approaching its end in the Gaza Strip, and there are already conflicts between the two sides. In the past three weeks, Hamas has published 18 Israeli hostages to preserve hundreds of Palestinian prisoners. That was after her deal, which was mediated by Egypt and Qatar to stop the fights that started after October 7, 2023 when a Hamas attack on Israel killed around 1,200 people and took about 250 Hostage. Israel’s later war against Gaza killed more than 48,000 Palestinians.
The deal seemed to be just before failure this week when both sides accused each other of violating their agreement. Hamas said it would pause and published hostages until Israel left more in Gaza strip; Israel said that the fights in the enclave would resume if the militant group was not released as hostages on Saturday until noon.
Then Hamas confirmed their commitment to the deal on Thursday and said that three Israeli hostages were published on Saturday as planned, although they described what they described as “Language of Threats and Integriments” from Israel and the USA as an argument for the decision.
“Everything is destroyed”
Empty black and white bombings with labels written on Hebrew garbage, the floor Khattab continues. He walks past a big bunch of them and picks you up. It feels like it is World War II, he says. He wonders where the content of this container has ended up and whose life they may have taken.
The lonely, partially standing building on campus, the Khattab had indicated the faculties of agriculture, veterinary medicine, law and political science. When he goes up the steps, the sound of his walking stick is reflected against the floor from the remaining walls of the structure.
Khattab is visibly shocked and murmurs himself when he walks through the halls he once knew. “Everything is destroyed,” he says. The walls here were also unrecognizable by graffiti.
Finally, the professor enters the building of the building. The floor is completely covered by bunch of bent aluminum rays, office furniture and documents. He turns to collect a stack of papers. They are transcripts – signs of life that the room once had long before the war, with grades that are no longer important to the students they received.
“In English they received 77 out of 100 in Arabic, 85, in philosophy, 88 … excellent, excellent markings.”
