Gaza students overcome Israel’s genocide to mark Tawjihi results
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- The Musa siblings — Sama (97.5%), Abdullah (94.6%), and Nada (94.4%) — passed their Tawjihi exams in Khan Younis; the family arranged home teachers for Abdullah and Nada, who could not attend private lessons due to physical disabilities.
- Palestinian Minister of Education Amjad Barham said about 89,000 students sat the Tawjihi this year across the occupied West Bank, East Jerusalem, and Gaza, with another 2,000 taking the exams in 46 other countries.
- More than 1,100 students due to sit this year's Tawjihi exams were killed by Israel, and over the past three years more than 106,000 Gaza students have taken the exam, including 36,900 in 2026.
- The United Nations reported in November that more than 97 percent of Gaza's schools have been damaged or destroyed over two years of war, with nearly 92 percent of education facilities requiring full reconstruction or major rehabilitation.
- Math teacher Hanaa al-Sayed taught Tawjihi students at a school in Deir el-Balah that also served as a displacement shelter, where pupils sat on mats with no desks or chairs and arrived carrying grief from losing family members.
- Tala Abu Sukkar, from the Bureij refugee camp, scored 86 percent after losing her brother, father, sister, and four nieces and nephews during the war; she told Al Jazeera the results brought "mixed emotions" of joy and grief.
Why it matters: The juxtaposition of high test scores with mass destruction — 97 percent of schools damaged, 1,100 student deaths, and 92 percent of facilities needing major reconstruction — quantifies what the war has cost Gaza's next generation while showing the education system surviving only on family and individual sacrifice. With 36,900 Gaza students sitting the 2026 Tawjihi, the results represent a generation determined to credential itself out of a war the article portrays as having hollowed out the institutions meant to serve them.
