Professor Mkhaimar Abusada. Photo courtesy of Lisa Kurian Philip/WBEZ

Mkhaimar Abusada is an Associate Professor of Political Science at Al-Azhar University in Gaza, and currently a visiting professor at Northwestern University. We spoke with him about his early life and education in Palestine as a child of refugees and his graduate studies in the United States, his experience teaching political science at Al-Azhar University from the late 1990s, and what has become of his university, his colleagues, and his students since the onset of the Gaza genocide in 2023. 

This interview was conducted by Alireza Doostdar as well as two research assistants. Its three-part audio recording can be accessed here. What follows is a full transcription of Professor Abusada’s interview, which has been lightly edited for clarity.

Part 1: Early life, education in Jabalia refugee camp and Birzeit University, graduate study in the United States

Alireza Doostdar (AD):  Thank you so much, Professor Abusada, for joining us. This is a conversation with Dr. Mkhaimar Abu Saada, who is an associate professor of political science at Al-Azhar University of Gaza. The conversation is taking place on May 4, 2025. First of all, thank you so much for agreeing to speak with us. I would love it if you could begin by just telling us a little bit about your early education and your life. Did you grow up in Gaza? Did you go to school in Gaza? If you could talk a little bit about that. 

Mkhaimar Abusada (MA): Well, first of all, Dr. Ali, many thanks for hosting me, and many thanks for inviting me to be part of this conversation. Very happy to see you and to see your team here, the research assistants. 

Speaking of myself, let me define myself as the following. I’m a descendant of a Palestinian refugee family. Both of my parents, my father and my mother, were originally from Mandate Palestine, or historic Palestine. And they were expelled – or fled, let’s put it this way – from Mandate Palestine, when the Palestinian Nakba happened in 1948. Both of my parents, they come from two different villages. My father comes from a village called Simsim, which is “sesame seeds,” and my mother comes from a village called Beit Daras. I don’t know what it means, but she comes from a faraway village. They both met in Gaza. And I was born in the Jabalia refugee camp as a son of a refugee family that was located in the Jabalia refugee camp, which is the biggest refugee camp in the Gaza Strip – which is now turned into complete rubble, as a result of the current Israeli war against Gaza.

I attended primary and secondary schools in the Jabalia refugee camps, all the way from grade one to high school, in UNRWA schools. Basically, UNRWA is the United Nations Relief and Works Agency, which is the UN agency that provides education, health, and employment for Palestinian refugees. So I attended UNRWA schools all the way from grade one, all the way to grade nine. And UNRWA doesn’t provide any education after grade nine. That becomes the responsibility of the so-called government or whoever the authority is in control of Gaza.

And then I went to secondary school, which was run by the Israeli occupation education authorities at that time. After I finished high school, I had the option of going, like the majority of the Palestinians, to go and do college education in Egypt or to go to the West Bank. The problem that I faced at that time, when I graduated from high school in 1982, was that Palestinians who finished high school had to wait a year in order to be registered in a university in Egypt. That was the rule. I don’t know why. I don’t even have information about that. So I decided to go and study in the West Bank. I went to Birzeit University. That’s one of the leading national Palestinian universities in the West Bank, which started a long time ago as a high school, a college. 

So I went to Birzeit. I studied history and political science. There wasn’t a major in political science. It was a minor in political science. So that’s what I did: history and political science at Birzeit University. And I had just graduated about seven months before the start of the Palestinian First Intifada. The Intifada erupted on December 9 of 1987. I have to say that, even while I was in college at Birzeit University, I’d always dreamed of going to graduate school or go and study for at least a Master’s. I mean, I have to say that I wasn’t thinking about a PhD at the beginning. So I stayed in Gaza for a couple of years after finishing from Birzeit University, trying to know where to go. 

I don’t want to make my story a long story. I have to say that family didn’t really want me to be in a very faraway place, like the United States of America. So they preferred that I go and study in Egypt. So I got admitted at the AUC, American University in Cairo, to do a Master’s in Middle Eastern Studies. But there was another problem: I tried many times to cross from Gaza into Egypt, and it didn’t work. For a number of times, it didn’t work. Then I had to switch gears and start to apply for universities here in the US, where I was admitted to come and do a Master’s in political science. I came to the US, and I started at a small school here in Chicago, Northeastern Illinois University, and started in the winter of 1990. And I finished my Master’s in political science, went back home to visit my family and basically to try to look for a job in the summer of 1991. 

And that was just right after the first Gulf War: the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait, and the US military operation – or the alliance operation against Iraq – to get Iraq out of Kuwait. Gaza, during that war, was under complete siege, because Saddam Hussein launched 39 missiles against Israel during that war. So the Israeli occupation, as a result of the ongoing Intifada, the uprising at that time, put Gaza under severe lockdown. So when I went back in the summer of 1991, I have to say, the prospects of staying there and finding a job were not really good. And before going home, I got accepted for a PhD program at the University of Missouri, Columbia.

So I stayed for about three months in Gaza in the summer of 1991. And then I decided I’m just going to go back and do my PhD. I have to say that my parents, at the beginning, were not really happy about it, going back to the US. But then they really liked the idea of going for a PhD. I mean, if you go back, at that time, a very limited number of Palestinians had PhDs back then. I mean, there was only one university in Gaza called the Islamic University of Gaza. Even Al-Azhar University, where I was [later] teaching, did not exist at that time. There was only one university, the Islamic University of Gaza, and there weren’t really many PhDs in Gaza. So my parents really liked the idea of me going back to the US and getting my PhD. 

So I came back to the US, went to the University of Missouri, Columbia, and halfway [through] my PhD, under the willingness of my family, I got married, went back to Gaza, and brought my wife back with me here to the US. And luckily, we had two children born in the US while I was doing my PhD. In the last stages of my PhD, I have to say my first son was born like a month after I did my comprehensive exams for the PhD, and my second son was born like 20 days after I defended my dissertation. 

So after graduating from the University of Missouri, Columbia, I stayed here for about seven months doing something called practical training at that time. And I have to say, I was happy: I have a family, I have my wife, I have two kids, I was a teaching assistant at the University of Missouri, Columbia. I could have found a job back then. But I have to say, again, under the insistence of my father, I had to go back to the Gaza Strip. [He was] telling me that Gaza is much better now in the summer of 1997 than when I left Gaza eight years ago, meaning that Oslo was signed. For the first time, a Palestinian authority was running the Gaza Strip. So he basically [told] me that it’s a much better place, and you should come back and look for a job in the Gaza Strip. 

So that’s what I did in the summer of 1997. I went back with my family to the Gaza Strip. And again, Al-Azhar was newly created at that time. So they wanted professors or anyone who they could get to basically teach at Al-Azhar. So I started teaching at Al-Azhar University from the fall of 1997-98, where I continued to teach in the same institution until the war erupted on June 7th of – I’m sorry, October 7th of – 2023. 

AD: Thank you, thank you so much for that. I wanted to ask a little bit about your undergraduate education, maybe also your pre-college education. So you moved around. You were in Jabalia, and then you went to Birzeit. You tried to go to Egypt. So you were both, it seems, mobile, but also constricted in various ways. And there’s all these political events happening. So at some point, the First Intifada erupts. And of course, Gaza is under occupation when you were growing up, I mean, under direct military occupation. Could you say a little bit about how the political climate or the facts of the occupation impacted your education? I mean, was it easy, for example, to travel between Gaza and the West Bank at the time? How would you even travel? Did you have to go through the 1948 territories? How did that happen at the time? It’s very hard to imagine that kind of travel now.

MA: Well, that is a very good question. If we want to go back to the early 1980s, when I started college at Birzeit University, things were completely different from the situation we are in now, or even the situation before October 7. In the early 1980s, it was right after the signing of the Camp David peace agreement between Egypt and Israel. And at that time, the right wing in Israel – who were led by the Likud party, led by Menachem Begin, then Shamir, and also Sharon later on – at that time, the policy of the Israeli government was to integrate the Palestinian territories into Israel. So you did ask a very good question. 

Gaza and the West Bank are separated by Israel, because as a result of the 1948 war, Israel took control of 78% of Mandate Palestine, and 22% of Palestine is Gaza and the West Bank. So Gaza, which is separated by about 40 kilometers from the West Bank, came under the administration of Egypt between 1948 until 1967, and the West Bank became part of Jordan because of the annexation of the Jordan government of the West Bank. But anyway, as a result of the 1948 war, physically or geographically speaking, we no longer have a contiguous Palestinian territory. They became separated, and they are until today geographically separated. So traveling from Gaza to the West Bank, you have to go through Israel. You have to go through an Israeli territory which is about 40 kilometers, traveling from Gaza to the West Bank. But again, going back to that period, the Israeli right-wing government at that time, they were trying to integrate the West Bank and Gaza into Israel, so we didn’t have the policy of checkpoints as we have it now. Yes, there was a checkpoint, which is Erez Beit Hanoun checkpoint that connects Gaza with Israel, but then when you pass that checkpoint, you are free to go to Israel or the West Bank.

So there was no restriction of movement back then. And even at one point, when Sharon was the head of the Israeli Southern Command and the Israeli Army, he even took [away] that checkpoint: there was no Israeli military checkpoint between Gaza and Israel. Palestinians in Gaza were able to just drive into Israel 24/7 – 24 hours, seven days a week – because the situation was very calm back then. And again, it was part of the Israeli right-wing government to try to consolidate or integrate those territories into Israel.

And it wasn’t until the start of the Palestinian First Intifada in December of 1987 when the Israeli government put back the checkpoint between Gaza and Israel to try to block any Palestinian guerrilla fighters going from Gaza into Israel or from Gaza into the West Bank. So again, during the years where I studied at Birzeit, [there were] no restrictions whatsoever, we were able to go from – I mean, I was going back and forth from Gaza to the West Bank sometimes on a weekly basis. Every weekend, especially in the summertime, every weekend I would just go and stay with my family in Gaza, and at the beginning of the week I’d go back to Birzeit. Again, it was a one-hour and 15-minute drive from Gaza to Birzeit University at that time. It wasn’t really that much. And there were no restrictions whatsoever. We can go. We can drive day and night, any time. Things were very easy back then.

Things started to get much more complicated after the start of the Palestinian First Intifada, as a result of the Israeli policies or, what do you call them, restrictions. They tried to restrict the movement of the Palestinians from Gaza into the West Bank and into Israel proper, and that’s when things became a little bit complicated. But let me also add to that, even back then, when I traveled to the US, I flew from Ben-Gurion Airport. We were even allowed, as Palestinians, to fly from the Israeli airport, the main airport, which now it’s completely forbidden for the Palestinians. A very limited number of Palestinians from the West Bank, they travel through Ben-Gurion Airport. No Palestinian from Gaza is even allowed to get close to the airport. 

So things were much more easy. Again, there was no Intifada. It was after Israel invaded Lebanon in 1982 and expelled the PLO and PLO fighters from Lebanon and dispersed them into a number of Arab countries, mainly Syria, Yemen, Sudan, Algeria, Tunisia. So Israel thought that the threat coming from Lebanon by the PLO – or the PLO trying to recruit Palestinians from the Palestinian occupied territories, Gaza and West Bank – there were no prospects for such recruitment. So that’s why there was a lot of openness, so to speak, between the occupied territories and Israel, where I remember back then, there were roughly 100,000 Palestinian laborers from Gaza going daily into Israel, working and going back to the Gaza Strip. Again, restrictions started with the First Intifada – much more restrictions, especially between Gaza and Israel and Gaza and the West Bank with the creation of the Palestinian Authority in 1994. That’s when the Israeli army or the Israeli security establishment decided to make more separation between Gaza and Israel. And when you make separation between Gaza and Israel, that means the separation becomes also with the West Bank, which is the other part of Palestine.

AD: That’s right. And the policy of integration that you mentioned by the Israeli right wing governments – was this primarily about labor, [about the fact] that they wanted Palestinian workers to be able to work in the territory, in the 1948 territories? Or were there other reasons as well? 

MA:  Two things. Part of it, yes, Israel was basically able to use Palestinian cheap labor. Palestinians, as I mentioned to you – to the best of my knowledge, there were roughly 100,000 Palestinian laborers working.

I have to say, I remember some of my classmates in high school dropped out of high school and went to work inside Israel, or, you know, the 1948 territory, because it was a booming, how do you say it, a booming labor market for the Palestinians, where you can just go and work inside Israel, make good money, come back, start a family and start a new life. So I remember, in the late 1970s, early 1980s, there were many Palestinians who did not even finish high school, because they thought, at the end of the day, even with a college degree, you’re gonna end up working in Israel, so why do all that hustle? So let’s just drop out of school, go and work in Israel. So there were a lot of opportunities working in the construction sector inside Israel, working in agriculture, you name it. So I can’t even speak of any unemployment at that time […] There were restrictions on the Palestinians who were involved in armed struggle against Israel. They were restricted from the Israeli security establishment into going into Israel or working inside Israel. 

But the other thing that I should mention here, all the way from 1967 until Israel disengaged or withdrew from the Gaza Strip in September of 2005, there were 21 Israeli settlements, Israeli Jewish settlements built inside Gaza for Israeli Jews. So part of the integration is that there were Israeli Jewish settlers going back and forth between Gaza and Israel. Yes, there were assigned roads for the Israeli Jewish settlers, but I have also to say that, I mean, going back to these days, many Palestinians from inside 1948 – the Arab, the Palestinian Israelis who did not leave Palestine in the first Nakba – they would come to Gaza on Saturdays, which is the Israeli holiday – and go back to Israel on the same day. Many Palestinian Arabs, they would come to Gaza to fix their cars in Gaza, to go to dental clinics in Gaza.

It was much cheaper. So Gaza was booming in the sense that Palestinian laborers were working inside Israel, Palestinians inside Israel were coming to Gaza to shop, to fix their cars, to go to dental clinics, which were much cheaper then, compared to prices inside Israel. So access and movement was, again, no restrictions. And again, as I mentioned to you, the presence of Israeli settlers inside Gaza, that was part of the so-called integrating of Gaza into Israel by moving more and more Israeli settlers. 

Now, yes, Gaza is a very small place. I mean, if you want to look in terms of numbers or percentages, Gaza is 365 square kilometers, which is 1.3% of Mandate Palestine. So the Israeli settlement enterprise in Gaza was not even compared to the Israeli settlement enterprise in the West Bank, where the West Bank is much, it’s 15 times bigger than the Gaza Strip, 5,500 square kilometers, is about 20.5% of Mandate Palestine. So yes, there were Jewish settlements inside Gaza, but not as much as the number of settlements or number of Israeli Jewish settlers in the West Bank. 

Research Assistant (RA): You mentioned that a lot of your classmates would drop out and then they would go work in Israel to go make money and come back. Did they have access to education opportunities there if they wanted to continue their education, or is that restricted to them?

MA: That is a very good question. Let me say that back then, there was only one Palestinian university in the Gaza Strip and it was on Islamic studies. So basically, if you want to go to college back then, it started in 1979 and started as an Islamic school. So if you go and study there, you study Islamic teaching. Later on, the university started to have a business school, engineering and others. But in the period that I’m talking about, some of my classmates – I remember that they dropped out of high school, they went and joined the workforce inside Israel because we had only one university and not too many options. Yes, Palestinians can go and study in Egypt, but again, as I mentioned to you, they have to wait at least one year before they can join college. And I have to say, people thought, you know, at the end of the day, you go to college to get a job. So if you can get a job now and you make good money and you can get married and start a family, why go and finish high school and then do the college thing?

So that’s, I think, what made some of my classmates not finish high school. I’m not talking about a large number – some of them, we’re talking about some of them. I don’t know the exact, let’s say, social circumstances of these families. Maybe some of these families did not have someone who can sponsor the family. So the younger kids who is 17 or 18 years old would leave school to go and work in Israel and make money to spend on the family. So it probably could also [have to do] with the hardship that the Palestinians were facing back then, that [there was] no one to sponsor the whole family or no one to sponsor the younger siblings. So the older sibling would just drop off high school to go and work in Israel, make money so the whole family can survive. I’m talking about my classmates from the Jabalia refugee camp. We’re talking about mainly refugee families who were facing hardship all the way from 1948 all the way until now.

AD: Tell us a little bit about when you returned from Birzeit to Gaza. First of all, what kind of work were you looking for at the time? I mean, what would have been available to somebody who has an undergraduate degree in history and political science? 

MA: Teaching, that’s the only thing. I mean, with a bachelor’s degree in history and political science, the only option I could have is just to teach. But all the way until the creation of the Palestinian Authority, the Israeli government created something called the Civil Administration, Al-Idara Al-Madaniya, where they have an Israeli officer running the education department and an Israeli officer running the health department. So basically, to get a job in the education department, what they call it, that was the name of it, you have sometimes, I mean, let’s say that you have two options. One is to work for schools, UNRWA schools, you can be a teacher at UNRWA schools, or you can work for the public schools, which were run by the Israeli-led department of education. I have to say that I, you know, whether it was luck or I wasn’t lucky, I didn’t get a job with either. I have to say that I didn’t apply for UNRWA back then, because as I mentioned to you earlier, I did have a dream of going to grad school. So I mean, I tried to get a job, didn’t get, I have to say that I didn’t really invest a lot of time trying to get a job with either UNRWA or the ministry or the department of education that was led by the Israeli occupation forces, because I had in mind that this is what I wanted to do, just I wanted to go to grad school. 

Now, it took me some time. I have to say, as I mentioned to you, that I wanted to go to Egypt to go to the AUC, which didn’t work. Then I decided to come to the US. It took me some time, you know, to get an Israeli permission to leave Gaza and to come to the US, because I guess leaving Gaza to the US would mean that flying through a Ben-Gurion airport.

So there were restrictions. Now, yes, I flew from Ben-Gurion airport, but I still had to meet with the Israeli intelligence officer to give me a permission to do that. So that was a period of what you call it extortion, okay? To give that, to get that permission. And without that permission, I can’t travel. There has to be like some kind of a permission granted by the Israeli intelligence to fly from Ben-Gurion airport. So I think – when I think about it – that’s what delayed me from the time of graduation all the way to the time that I came to the US, because of the time spent getting that permission to leave. But you also need to take into consideration that the Palestinian First Intifada was going at that time, and there were restrictions on the movement to the Palestinians, as I mentioned earlier, with regard to access and movement for the Palestinians in and outside Gaza. I mean, I spoke about the no restrictions or no checkpoints or no problems before the start of the Intifada. Once the Intifada started, then things started to get really much more complicated. 

AD: So you said that you tried to go to Egypt and you couldn’t go. You had the admissions from AUC. And then you got the admission from the University of Northern Illinois. 

MA: No, first I was admitted to Roosevelt University, downtown Chicago. That’s the university that I got admitted to, but it’s a private university that is very expensive. So I did one semester and then I transferred to Northeastern Illinois University, where I got my Master’s from Northeastern Illinois University. It’s the north side of Chicago. 

AD: Right, right. So for those two, you had to navigate different kinds of restrictions. For the Egyptian one, why was it that it didn’t work? Did you have to get admission or permission from the Israelis or from the Egyptians, or was there something else? 

MA: There was a system at that time that Egyptian officers at the border would not allow Palestinians under the age of 26 to cross. I do not know why that was the policy at that time, but this is what I know: that if you were under the age of 26, you cannot really cross into Egypt, because the Israelis were not allowing any Palestinian under the age of 26 to come back in less than six months. Meaning that if you are under the age of 26 and you leave Gaza to Egypt, you cannot come back before spending six months in Egypt.

AD:  Right, right. Now, when you were doing your Master’s and your PhD in the United States, were you able to go back to Gaza to do research or interviews or to just visit family? 

MA: That’s a very good question. We, back then, were under the impression that when you go study, you go all the way until you get your degree. You do not come in between because some Palestinians came [back] halfway and weren’t allowed to go back, okay?

So I have to say, I didn’t go back during my Master’s. I, you know, from the beginning until the end of it, didn’t go back to Gaza, you know, for the simple reason that I might be prevented from going back. And when I did my PhD, I did go in the middle of my PhD. I did once go back, you know, when I got married and came back with my wife. So with my Master’s, no, didn’t go in between. With my PhD, I went once, got married, came back, and that was it.

Part 2: Teaching political science at Al-Azhar University in Gaza, 1997-2023

AD: So then you went back in ‘97? 

MA: Yes, the summer of 1997. 

AD: Right, and this is when, so this is in the post-Oslo period. This is why I imagine there’s investment to start new universities, new academic institutions. Is that how … ? 

MA: At that time, let’s say that Gaza was booming. There is a Palestinian Authority. For the first time the Palestinians were experiencing something we call it self-autonomy – because the Palestinian Authority is not a state. It’s a self-governing authority for the Palestinians in the Gaza Strip and the West Bank. So at that time, let’s say some Palestinians started to go back to Gaza from – well, according to the statistics that I see, half a million Palestinian made it back to the Palestinian occupied territories between the year of 1994 until, I don’t know when, most probably until the early years of President Mahmoud Abbas. But I know that some figures are talking about [how] half a million Palestinians made it back. So many Palestinians who… 

AD: Made it back from where? 

MA: From different Arab countries, because – let me say two things. When the war of 1967 happened, the Israelis refer to it as the Six-Day War, there were many Palestinians, Palestinian students, studying in Egypt, studying in Arab countries. Some Palestinians were traveling. So when the Six-Day War happened, all those Palestinians outside of Gaza and the West Bank became displaced. They were not allowed to come back. So when Oslo was signed, all those Palestinians were allowed to come back again. Now, after 20 years, all of them, most of them got married, they have children. So that’s the number I’m talking about, half a million Palestinians were allowed to come back. 

And in addition to that, some Palestinians [had previously] found jobs in the Gulf, mainly in the education sector. Kuwait, Saudi Arabia – mainly Kuwait and Saudi Arabia – had recruited many Palestinian teachers, men and women, to teach in the Gulf countries, especially after […] the high prices of oil or petroleum after the October War of 1973. Because of the Arab oil boycott, the prices of oil went from $3 per barrel before the October 1973 war to $11 US dollars after the oil embargo, meaning that that money – the increase or the tripling of oil prices – it brought a lot of revenues for the Gulf countries, mainly Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, and the others. So I believe it was at that time when the Gulf countries started to recruit many Palestinian teachers and other jobs, but mainly teachers who ended up in Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, who started to teach. But then what happened after the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait in 1990 – and because Yasser Arafat aligned with Saddam Hussein – as a result of that, Kuwait and the Gulf countries started to get rid of the Palestinians who were employed in the Gulf. So I have to say that some Palestinians started to come back from the Gulf with their families back to Gaza, back to the West Bank, because they felt that there is no future of staying in the Gulf, because many, many jobs were terminated as a result of some kind of revenge against the PLO’s reaction to […] the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait. So what I said, that with the establishment of the Palestinian Authority in 1994, Palestinians who became displaced after 1967 started to come back. Palestinians who were in the Gulf started to come back. 

And let’s also say that some Palestinians who were displaced in Syria and Lebanon thought that going back to the Gaza Strip or the West Bank is much better than staying in Lebanon, staying in Syria, because those Palestinians were facing tough daily life until now, in Syria and Lebanon. So that’s why I say these were the booming years of Gaza, after the establishment of Oslo. 

So when I went back again, Al-Azhar was recently created, a couple of other universities were created, there was a lot of construction going on. I mean, imagine it’s a place which is forgotten, and at one point it becomes center stage, where U.S. President, former President Bill Clinton, visited Gaza in December of 1998 to try at that time to amend the Charter of the PLO. The Prime Minister of Britain, Tony Blair, went and visited Yasser Arafat in Gaza. So Gaza became center stage, [such] that it was visited by many international dignitaries. Yasser Arafat’s main headquarters and office was based in Gaza. So it was good days, you know, to go back to Gaza and start a new life and a new job in Gaza at that time. 

AD: What was it like to be starting at Al-Azhar University? I mean, I imagine you were one of the people who helped build the political science department. 

MA: I have to say the department was created a year before I was there. The Department of Political Science was created a year before I joined the university. But there were, at that time, there were, let’s say, two professors in political science who started the department, and when I got there, me and a couple of other professors joined the department in the same year. But I have to say that even before we got there, the department was already created, and the curriculum – or the, how do you call it, I guess the bachelor curriculum – was already created and was already done. So when I joined the department, it was newly established, but it had already created curriculum for me, and it was already created by these two professors who joined the university before me. 

AD: Who were these professors?

MA:  They’re both retired now, but one of them is called Dr. Riyad Al-Aile, who is now in, I think, in Spain because he has Spanish citizenship, and the other professor is Kamal Al-Astal. These were the two professors who created the Department of Political Science before I even got there. 

AD: And what were you teaching when you started? 

MA: I started teaching Intro to Political Science. That was my initial course, and I did two sections of Introduction to Political Science, and I taught also a course in Public Opinion. That was also a course that I taught. I remember back then we had, what do we call it, day classes and night classes. So you do the class during daytime, and you do the same section at nighttime for, let me put it this way, for students who were working for the PA mainly, and they wanted to finish their college degree because they didn’t do that before the PA [had been established]. Now they had a chance to do their college degree. So the university offered an evening program in Political Science, in Sociology, in Law, and a number of disciplines. So basically this is what I taught at the beginning, Intro to Political Science and Public Opinion for the day section and the evening section. 

RA: How did, I guess I’m interested if we can go back just a little bit in sort of what your focus was in your Master’s and your PhD, and sort of how that brought you into Al-Azhar, and also about the internal diversity of the department. Was there a lot of diversity amongst the fairly small Political Science faculty? How was the collaboration with the other professors? Did you feel any sort of pressures to teach Political Science a particular way? And how did your research sort of continue once you became a professor? 

MA: Okay, when we look at Al-Azhar University at that time, it was a newly created university. I can’t even recall the number of students at that time. I mean the maximum number we got, we reached the number 15,000 students, grad and undergrad students. I think, around when the war of October 7th happened, that’s what we had. But I think when I joined Al-Azhar, I would imagine we were less than 10,000, probably something like 7,000, because when I joined Al-Azhar there was no medical school, no dental school, no engineering. Like when I first joined there, we had a College of Education, Arts and Science, Business. They did have Pharmacology back then. And Sharia. But the university expanded over the years […] Like in the year 2000, we started a medical school. In the year 2007, we started a dental school. I do not recall when exactly the engineering school was created, but something in between. 

So anyway, speaking of where I was teaching, they were going … – okay, going back to my PhD. My dissertation had to do with Palestinian political attitudes toward the peace process. Oslo was signed on September 13 of 1993. It was exactly two months before I did my comps, my comprehensive exams. And while I was trying to prepare my thesis title, Oslo was progressing. So through my readings, the subject of studying public opinion and political attitudes became an interest for me when I was doing my PhD. So I ended up doing my dissertation under the title “Palestinian Political Attitudes Toward the Peace Process,” subtitled “The Impact of Party Affiliation Toward the Peace Process.” At that time, there was a big split or division between Fatah or the PLO and Hamas. Hamas vowed from the beginning to sabotage Oslo. Fatah and some PLO factions were with Oslo. So I looked into that. Now, my dissertation was based on public opinion polls collected by a number of Palestinian survey centers in the West Bank at that time.

But I think, if I understood your question – it’s not, we’re not talking about Northwestern or University of Chicago where they look for specifically a professor who is specializing in environmental politics or specializing in, let’s say, something very specific. Anyone with a PhD in political science can join the department. Again, it’s a period where the university didn’t have many PhDs and anyone can basically, can be recruited just for being a political scientist or a sociologist, so they were not picky or specific about what area of interest [I had]. Just having a PhD in political science, that was good enough to start a job, especially coming from, you know, graduating from the U.S. I mean, for them, that was something of high interest. 

RA: Within the department, maybe they’re not recruiting for different specialties, but what was the balance? Like, what was really represented in the department? Was it sort of diverse where you had somebody who is more focused on, you know, quantitative data and somebody else more focused on… 

MA: Let me put it to you this way. We were very much professors who are either IR, comparative, or political theory and political thought. That’s the main courses that we were – I mean, for someone to do methodology, any one of us would teach methodology or research methods. I wouldn’t say that we were highly focused on statistical analysis or what you called quantifying research. We did make our student take one course in statistics, but it usually would be taught from the department of statistics. We would not make one of the political science professors, like they do it here in America, teach the statistical class for poli-sci students. We would make someone from the statistics department do that. 

AD: You mentioned that when you joined, there were maybe less than 10,000 students, fewer than 10,000, and then by 2023 there were about 15,000. 

MA: Yes.

AD: How did the political science department and then the student population of political science change in this period?

MA: Very good question. I have to say, in the late 1990s-early 2000s, we were a big department. We would probably have 50 students, more or less, every year coming, studying political science. But I have to say, after Hamas took over the Gaza Strip [in 2007], the number of poli-sci students started to decline, where we’d be lucky if we get 10 students each year. Meaning that, as a result of Hamas taking over Gaza and the PA being expelled from Gaza, students started to question their ability to find a job when they graduate. Because what happened is that after the PA was expelled as a result of that short-lived civil war between Hamas and Fatah, or the PA, the only employer in the Gaza Strip became either Hamas, UNRWA, or civil society. So, if you are not part of Hamas, students will not be able to find a job: they won’t be hired by Hamas unless they were part of Hamas or part of the organization. So I have to say, gradually speaking, less and less students became interested in political science for fear of not finding a job after they graduate. I’m talking about undergraduate students here. 

Also, the Master’s program started in 2007-2008. That’s the year when we started the Master’s program. At the beginning, I have to say, we would get like 100 applications and we were not allowed to take more than 15. These were the directions of the Palestinian Ministry of Education in the West Bank – because we were still, Al-Azhar University was [still] more a PA-loyal institution, unlike the Islamic University, which was much more loyal to Hamas. So we were getting directions from the Ministry of Education in Ramallah, run by the Palestinian Authority, and when we were permitted to open a Master’s program in political science, we were told not to take more than 15 students every year. So I do remember at the early years of opening the program, we would get 100 students or even more, and we would make them take a written exam and a personal interview to filter those 100 plus and take the best 15 of them. But at the later stages, the same thing [happened] with undergrad students. Either a student thought, you know, what are they going to do with a Master’s degree in political science or [that the] chances of getting a job aren’t really that good. So also the number of enrollment at the Master’s level declined from, as I mentioned, getting 100 applications and filtering to take 15 to the point where we would just get 10, 9, something more or less, and we would just very much take whoever would apply. 

The other thing is that by the, you know, before October 7, in the last few years before October 7, it became – how do you say it, a moda in Arabic – it became a trend that all universities in Gaza were offering Master’s [degrees] in political science. So you have to be special in order to attract students. Like a Master’s in political science was [offered by] the Islamic University of Gaza, at Al-Azhar, at Palestine University, at another university. So students have different options. When we opened the program in ‘97, ‘98, we were the only university in Gaza offering a Master’s in political science. And that’s why we would get 100 [applicants] or even more. 

AD: ‘97 or 2007? 

MA: I’m sorry, 2007-2008. But by the last few years [before October 7], the Master’s in political science was offered by three other Palestinian universities. That’s one thing. And second, I guess, speaking of market-wise, the chances of improving your job opportunities weren’t really that much with a Master’s in political science. 

AD: You were one faculty member among how many in the political science department?

MA: At one point, we were nine. As I mentioned, the department started with two. At one point, we were nine. Before October 7, we went down to five. Those other four retired. We were still – and how it works in Palestine, retirement at the age of 65 for university professors is compulsory; I mean, if you reach the age of 65, you know, you retire – but then we would still allow them to teach part-time. So those who were retired, they [could still] come and teach like a class or supervise students, Master’s students. So what I’m saying is that four retired before, you know, at one stage, but we were only five full-time professors at the department. But the other four who were retired, I would say two of them were still coming in and teaching part-time. Two of them left Gaza and no longer were doing that. 

RA: Were there any friendly rivalries between your political science department at Al-Azhar and any of the other universities? 

MA: You know, we would always think about [how] other universities are, for example, making it, making their criteria for admission much easier than our criteria. So we would talk about, you know, that: how other universities were taking students more than we do because their standard entry or the criteria for recruiting students were much easier than ours. […] For example, our students must take TOEFL by the time they graduate with their Master’s in political science: they must take a TOEFL exam and get the score of 450. That was compulsory. Second, we would not take any student with less than 2.5 out of 4 in their bachelor’s degree. Others would make them do something like make them take two [prerequisite] courses, get an A or a B, and that would compensate for their, how do you call it, GPA in undergrad. So we were more – I have to say that we were more strict in our criteria for admitting students. So others were more easy and then, yes, we would talk about it, you know. It wasn’t where we had like a very tense relationship. We still would talk to each other, but that’s part of the gossip. 

RA: And was Al-Azhar the only university that derived their academic requirements from the West Bank? Like, you’re saying the other schools had other requirements, you could have a lower score. Is that in relation to that sort of academic thing? 

MA: Now she’s the one who’s drifting me into other areas. It’s not me, okay? 

When the split happened between Hamas and Fatah – just to give you a brief political introduction about that – Hamas won the 2006 January legislative elections. A year and a year and a half after they won the elections, there was a short civil war between the PA and Hamas. And as a result of that short-lived civil war, Hamas took over the Gaza Strip and the PA was expelled. Meaning that PA ministers, PA officials either fled from Gaza or their departure from Gaza was coordinated by a third party, like the Egyptians or other Arab countries. But what I wanted to say to you is that as a result of that split,, we ended up with two governments. We are still under occupation, we have two, we ended with two political entities from summer of 2007 all the way until now: a government that was led by Hamas in Gaza and another government that was led by Fatah or the PA in the West Bank. 

So let’s say that the Islamic University of Gaza, which was more of a Hamas-run university, they would take their directives from the Hamas Minister of Education in the Gaza Strip and they even created two new universities in Gaza, which were created and licensed by the Hamas-run Minister of Education. We, Al-Azhar, did not recognize the so-called Hamas government in Gaza, so we would very much stick to the rules or regulations of the Ministry of Education in Ramallah, which is the PA. And now, I mean, when you think about it, those who graduated from those two universities that were created by Hamas, they’re in limbo. I mean, because these two universities were not even recognized by the Palestinian Authority in Ramallah. 

Now, let’s say [that when] the Islamic University of Gaza faced troubles getting a license for a program or a college or something, they would just turn to the Ministry of Education in Gaza. But we [at Al-Azhar] still had to deal with the Ministry of Education because they are the de facto government in Gaza. So they would, for example, sometimes they would deploy their policemen at the gates of the university because all the time we had a very tense relationship between the students: those who belong to Hamas, those who belong to Fatah, there were quarrels all the time. So at one point, there was an incident in which one student was killed, for example, okay? And as a result of that, Hamas deployed its police on the gates of the university, and to do that, the university had to deal with the police, had to deal with the Hamas Ministry of Education. So at that point, we had no option but to deal with them. But in terms of what I meant – in terms of licensing a new program, whether it’s a Master’s or undergraduate – we would not apply to the Hamas Ministry of Education in Gaza. We would apply to get that permission from the Ministry of Education in Ramallah. If that’s what you meant by your question. 

RA: Could I ask a question? So with Al-Azhar University receiving direction from the PA, from Ramallah, does that kind of influence the way that you taught? Did you experience self-censorship, for example? Were there things that were acceptable for you to teach about, I suppose, like Palestinian politics, or about the role of the occupation in Palestinian politics, or was that not the case? 

MA: It was like common sense. Al-Azhar University’s Board of Trustees is appointed by the president, by President Mahmoud Abbas. The Board of Trustees select the president or appoint the president of the university, and the president of the university appoints the deans of the 11, 12 different colleges in coordination with the Board of Trustees. So we are, let’s say, 95% Fatah University. They call it a PLO university because the PLO includes other Palestinian factions, but when Al-Azhar was created, it was created by a presidential decree by President Yasser Arafat. So it was, historically speaking, a Fatah university, but there are professors who belong to other factions or are independents, just like me. I mean, I consider myself an independent Palestinian. So if you want to look at the university [in terms of] the Board of Trustees, 90% or more come from Fatah. If you look at the president of the university and the deans, they usually, most of the time, come from Fatah.

But that doesn’t mean they put pressure on professors [regarding] how to teach or what to teach. We have total freedom. Some of our professors were Hamas. I mean, some of the professors, you probably will ask the questions: I mean, if it was a Fatah university from the beginning, how did it end up [like this], you know? What happened is that after Hamas took over the Gaza Strip in the summer of 2007, some professors who had some, let’s say, they like Hamas or they basically were not officially part of Hamas, but after Hamas took over the Gaza Strip, they publicly became more…

RA: Endorsed, supported?

MA: Thank you. Endorsing or supporting Hamas. So the university could not fire them. They could not do anything against them. They could – we were able to teach whatever the textbook we use. There was no intervention in the textbooks we use, the curriculum we use, or the way we teach. Total freedom when it comes to that. 

RA: One more follow-up. You said that the students from other universities, not Al-Azhar, after the wake of the war and the genocide, they’re in a kind of limbo now…

MA: I mean, those who graduated from those two universities, which were created by Hamas. I mean, I still know that there was a university called Al-Ummah University, it was created by Hamas, without license from the Minister of Education in Ramallah, and there was another police college or police academy called Al-Rabat Academy [where] people studied, you know, they were teaching security majors or whatever you want to call it. So what I’m saying is that these two universities were not licensed, were never recognized by the Minister of Education. I mean, imagine what’s going to be their status now. That’s what I mean, they are in limbo. I mean, [these students] studied at, they graduated from universities or colleges that were created by Hamas. And, you know, it probably has to do with the whole thing about the day after the war. But I guess what I was trying to say is that, you know, that it was somehow a mistake, you know, creating universities without the approval of the Palestinian Minister of Education in Ramallah. And now the whole thing is under question. Their future is in limbo. 

But right now, the 2.2 million Palestinians in Gaza are basically not working. If someone is working, they’re working online. And basically, the Palestinians are being fed by UNRWA, international organizations. So nothing is – what I wanted you to know is that nothing is moving right now. We’re not talking about research. I mean, yes, there are some Master’s students who are defending their Master’s theses online now. You know, I have a student who was in his final stages of finishing his Master’s thesis, and he defended his Master’s thesis online. Okay. And we did have a number of students who did that. We – I mean, we are struggling. We are very much struggling to say that the educational life is moving forward. But that’s – we’re going to come to that later on. But basically, in terms of research, in terms of classrooms, none of that exists now anymore. 

AD: Let me ask you one more question before we turn to the present. So you were department chair in political science, and you were department chair in a period that was post-Hamas taking over, right? 

MA: Yes.

AD: And the siege has been tightened, and there’s a complete blockade. So it’s some of the hardest times for people in Gaza. How was it to be department chair during this period? 

MA: In terms of what? Be more specific. 

AD: In terms of academically … in terms of, you know, dealing with challenges around whether it’s teaching, whether it’s student recruitment, whether it’s, you know, the challenges of running a university and maintaining the kind of academic life of a sizable institution. I mean, 15,000 students is not a small university. 

MA: Speaking of my chairmanship of the political science department, I have to say that the most important thing that I had to deal with is, as I mentioned earlier, the decline of the number of students who were enrolling in political science, whether at the Master’s level or at the undergraduate level. And I have to admit that I ran out of ideas, you know, how you – I mean, we talked about this. Other universities were competing with us, they were making their enrollment criteria much easier than ours. But I have to say after I left – after I, you know, I basically resigned [over] an issue that that’s no big deal of talking about now – the person who came after me, the person who’s probably the person who spoke to AAUP, Dr. Abed Rabbo Al-Azzi, he decided to do something different. He decided to start making major and minor between political science and, let’s say, IR. Political science and media. Political science and, for example, public administration. So he tried to make, let’s say, new openings that might encourage more students to come. That did help, but not very much. Okay. But another thing that we did, you know, after I finished my term, he opened a new Master’s in IR and diplomacy. Sometimes in my culture, the names attract students. When you say Master’s in IR and diplomacy, you know, those poor kids think that they’re going to be diplomats when they graduate, okay? So my successor, I have to say, was more creative than I was in terms of creating new programs which were more appealing to the students.

Now, for me, as I mentioned to you, it was really a period of decline. Probably that coincided with Hamas taking over Gaza. It coincided with other universities opening the same programs. But I also know that it was a period of political upheavals in our region […] The Arab Spring just started around – before I became the chairperson of the department, the Arab Spring started in early 2011, and then Gaza went into, let’s say, some good years and some bad years, you know. Speaking of the year Morsi was president of Egypt, things were much more easy getting in and out of Gaza. After Morsi was ousted [in 2013], things became much more complicated. It was those years when Gaza was in a number of wars with Israel, 2008-2009, the first war between Hamas or Gaza and Israel. 2012, another war. 2014, a major war, not unlike this one. 2021 … So it was, look, let me summarize it, and sometimes this is, you know, when I’m here at Northwestern or in Chicago, I think about those days when I was at Al-Azhar … Nothing was normal. You cannot put a syllabus and stick to it. There is no way you can do 70% of the syllabus that you put forward at the beginning of the semester, because we always have strike days against the occupation. We would have student internal clashes between Fatah and Hamas. We would have, let’s say, a war or an escalation with Israel. So nothing was normal, and there is no way, as I mentioned to you, that, if you put forward a syllabus at the beginning of the term, that you can do it on time. There is no way you can do that, and most of the time, I would say there is 30% changes of the syllabus as a result of that. 

AD: Were any of the wars before 2023 directly impactful on the university, either because [they] targeted university infrastructure or because [they] killed faculty or students? I mean, do you remember any of that, like in 2014, say? 

MA: In 2008-2009, the first war between Hamas and Israel, we had a campus for the College of Agriculture in an area called Beit Hanun, which is not very far away from the border with Israel. That university farm was bulldozed or was completely destroyed. That was 2008-2009. Now, I know that there was a bombing of the Islamic University of Gaza. They bombed one of their buildings. Now, I think it was 2008-2009. I think one of their buildings was bombed. 

Now, our campus is next door. The Al-Azhar University is next door. We only separated with a wall between the two universities. It’s another story. I’ll tell you about it later on. I mean, originally, most of our professors were teaching at the Islamic University when it was created in 1979, but because of internal clashes between Islamists and nationalists, then Al-Azhar was created in 1991 to disperse the internal conflict within the Islamic University of Gaza. So what happened is that a part of the Islamic University land was given to Al-Azhar, and that’s why we ended up neighbors. We were just separated by a wall. So when the Islamic University was bombed in 2008-2009, the debris of that bombing reached Al-Azhar, or some of the glasses were shattered, windows were shattered, but the only thing I can think of is that the Islamic University of Gaza was bombed 2008-2009, and the bombing of the Islamic University, one of their buildings was bombed, impacted our campus. But that was the only [incident] – in addition to, as I mentioned, destroying the farm that belonged to the College of Agriculture of Al-Azhar University in 2008-2009. 

AD: But you would get, I imagine, teaching would be disrupted. 

MA: Definitely, yes. I mean, whenever there is what we call war – the Israelis call it military operation – yes, there will be no teaching at all. I mean, in 2008-2009, from the first day, which is December 27, all the way until it was January 17 of 2009, and that was the first war … And because it was the first one, the university gave the professors and students three weeks, no lectures, no school, no classes, because the university administration thought that professors and students will have to deal with the aftermath of the war that lasted 22 days. I think at that time, 2,200 Palestinians were killed. And it was the first one, so the university decided that in addition to the three weeks of war, [there would be] three weeks of no classes after war to deal with the impact of the war, the first one. But again, in 2012, there was a war of one week, no classes. In 2014, it was summertime, war started on July 7. Already it was summertime, so it was summer school, but also there were no classes for 51 days when the war erupted. I think it was July 7 until August 26 […] Also, when the war erupted in May of 2021 – I mean, you cannot have classes when there is bombing. I mean, you would risk … In addition to that, I mean, especially in 2008-2009 and 2014, there was displacement. In 2014, there were half a million Palestinians displaced from certain areas, so you cannot, I mean, it is not imaginable to think of having classes when there were like half a million Palestinians displaced as a result of the ground Israeli operation. Because there was a ground offensive in 2008-2009, and in 2014. The other two ones were only aerial bombing. There was no ground operation in 2012 and 2021.

But the answer to your question: no classes during Israeli-declared wars against Gaza, or military operations, because this is the only one that Israel called a war. The previous ones, we call it war, the Israelis call it military operation, meaning that it’s less intensity.

Part 3: The unfolding genocide, 2023-present

AD: Let’s talk about 2023. What happened to Al-Azhar University after October 7th? 

MA: Well, October 7th was a Saturday. Okay, so there were no classes. Our weekend is Friday and Saturday, so there were no classes to begin with. But from the beginning, from the first day, we knew that it’s gonna be destructive. And what happened is that it started at 6:30 a.m. in the morning. […] Again, it was a Saturday. Again, it was no school day. It was early morning, so by early morning, we knew that there was a big attack by Hamas and other Palestinian groups against Israel. And the Israeli, I say, retaliation started around 11, because I remember I was on a TV interview around 11:30 in the morning of that day, and the bombing was not very far away from where I lived. 

So from the beginning, I mean, it was a very intense bombing. That’s one thing. And second, on day number seven of the war, we were ordered by the Israeli army to move south or to leave from the north and Gaza City into the south. Gaza, let’s say, is separated by something we call Wadi Gaza, Gaza Valley, that separates the north of Gaza from the south of Gaza. So on day number seven, we were ordered by the Israeli army to evacuate all of north of Gaza, which means north of Gaza City and Gaza City, which is the most populated part of Gaza. We’re talking about 65% of the population who live in that area, or even maybe more. So on day seven, we were ordered to go south. I would say most of the Palestinians did go south, including me and my family. Some Palestinians didn’t go, just they didn’t have a place to go. But anyway, we later knew from the news that our campus became a shelter place. Some families who had evacuated their homes. Now families would just go to UNRWA schools, public schools, any UN facility to seek a safe place or a safe shelter. So Al-Azhar became a shelter to many displaced Palestinians from the early days of the war. That’s what I know. 

Now, Al-Azhar has two campuses. One is, we call it the old campus, which is in Gaza City, which is next to the Islamic University of Gaza. And we have a new campus built six years ago on the old Israeli settlement of Nitzarim, exactly in the middle of Gaza, where now it has become the area where the Israeli army is separating the north of Gaza from the south of Gaza. They call it Nitzarim axis… 

AD: It’s a corridor…

MA: … it’s a corridor, it’s a main street that cuts Gaza from the east to the west, all the way from the east to the west. Al-Azhar, with donation from Saudi Arabia, built three colleges there: school of law, arts and science, and education. And we also have a huge, what do they call it, a huge building that is for student activities. In that building, we have the single largest auditorium in the Gaza Strip that is enough for 1,800 people. In all of the Gaza Strip, we don’t have a place where they can have 1,800 seats, basically, in one place. It’s a building that, again, was donated by Saudi Arabia, was built in 2019. We moved into that building during COVID, or at the end of COVID.

The new campus is completely destroyed. I can show you images of the new campus, where it’s housing, as I mentioned to you, a school of law, arts and science, and a college of education – and a huge student activities building. That’s the huge auditorium I’m talking about. It’s completely gone, completely destroyed. The old campus, which is in Gaza City, the buildings are still there, but because of the bombing and the pressure of the bombing, all windows are shattered. All doors are broken, and because of that the place became a shelter for displaced Palestinians. I have to admit and say that there was a lot of looting […] Computers, laptops, chairs, desks, whatever you want to name, so basically now you have walls, nothing else. Desks, seats, computers, labs, you name it: it’s all gone as a result of, again, part of it was destroyed and shattered by the pressure of the bombing, and the other part was looted … Now, why did the looting happen? At one point, if you remember, I would say a year ago, there was something similar to what we have now, where we have lack of food, lack of food supplies, and because of winter time, people were using desks and chairs as wood to make food, to bake bread, whatever you want to name, so it’s a complete destruction. The walls, the buildings are standing, but as I mentioned, just only walls, nothing is left, so it needs complete rehabilitation. 

Now, there are other universities I know, Al-Israa University, for example – it has only one building not very far away from us, also in the Nitzarim area, it was completely detonated live. I know that the Israeli officer who detonated that, he did that live, I think he was reprimanded by one of his superiors. The Islamic University, I would say, I don’t know, but I would imagine most of its buildings were destroyed, bombed. 

AD: Your office was in the old campus? 

MA: New campus. In Arts and Science. Political Science is in Arts and Science, so in the new campus. So completely flattened. 

AD: Did you have anything in your office? 

MA: A computer, a small library. I have to say that most of my books were kept in my apartment in Gaza City. I don’t know even what happened to my personal library, but what I have in my office is just my personal computer, a few books, I would say, and I would probably say maybe 30 more or less Master’s theses, because we have a habit or a regulation, [such that] if I chair any student, if I am the supervisor or I’m the discussant, I get a copy of their Master’s thesis. So I kept all of them in my office, so that’s what I had in my office. 

AD: Were those kept anywhere else? Like are there student records, like the theses, are those digital? 

MA: We have them digitalized, yes. We have them on the website of the university. They are kept in a digital copy. But when students graduate, defend their Master’s thesis, they make seven copies: one for the library, one for the grad school, one copy for each member of the committee – which is, usually, it’s a three member committee – one for the school, for the college. Usually the committee is three or four, because sometimes you have what we call two supervisors, or a shared supervision, so it’s either three or four, so everyone would get a copy: one copy for the department, one copy for the college, one copy for the library, and one copy goes to to the graduate school, so in addition to a digital copy that goes into the website of the university. So I would imagine nothing is left of the university library, it’s gone, they’ve been using it … I know, because some professors talked about it, that they’ve been using books and old even sources or something like that, they’ve been using it to cook, to make bread, or to get warm in the cold winter nights.

AD: Were there any students or faculty that were known to you who were martyred, who died? 

MA: Now, I know that the number of professors who were killed is something like 100, 110 professors and academics who teach at universities and colleges who were killed, either intentionally or [through] collateral damage. I know a lot of students who were killed, but I have to admit that I do not know anyone on a personal basis [such] that, you know, this person that I’m acquainted with, or I know this person very well [and] he was, he or she was killed as a result of this war. 

AD: So the last time that you and I talked, you were still teaching, and you were teaching online, and I think you said something like there’s 30 or 40 percent of students taking online classes, is that still happening? Are you still teaching? 

MA: I am volunteering, okay. When I got the Scholars at Risk contract from Northwestern, I applied for something we call “leave without pay” at Al-Azhar University. So I am technically not teaching officially, because I am here at Northwestern University, but because of the war, and because some professors were killed, some professors became unable to teach while they are in Gaza. I know that there are a lot of professors in the U.S. and Europe who volunteered to teach a Gaza student online, so the department, or the chair of the department, asked me if I can voluntarily teach one class every semester. And I agreed, so I’m still teaching. 

Now I have to say that, still, enrollment is not as it used to be before the war. I would say that the class that I’m teaching this semester – I have only nine students who took the class on public opinion this semester. They took their final exams, you know, in the past two weeks. So yes, I have to say that students are very much struggling because they are displaced from one place to another place, that’s one thing. The other thing is that teaching and exams are online, in a place with no electricity for the past 18 months. And if you have no stable electricity, that means you have no stable internet, and I do have many of my students complaining that they could not download the online lectures because of weak internet connections – maybe also because of the university software program that we upload online lectures, we call it Moodle. Sometimes I just send them my recorded lectures on WhatsApp, so maybe they can access it in a much more easy way – that’s something that I did for my students, sending my recorded lectures on WhatsApp – but I have to say that it’s a tough thing. It’s a tough thing for my students. 

AD: And they’re all in Gaza?

MA: Most of them. Imagine … Abed Rabbo was talking about this incident the other day when he spoke, because I read the statement that he delivered at AAUP … Most students, they go to what we call internet cafes, where basically it’s a coffee shop – it’s a tent, where it becomes a coffee shop with access to internet. Many of the students go to these coffee shops so they can get access to the internet, where they can basically listen to the lectures, do their exams. So Abed Rabbo was saying – this is what he said, I mean I can show you the speech that he delivered; I have it on my WhatsApp – he said that this is the coffee shop that he usually goes to as a professor to do his university assignment. And he says that he usually goes in specific hours, you know, to upload lectures, to record lectures, to do all of that. And what he said exactly is that the next day that he didn’t go there, that internet cafe was bombed… 

AD: They bombed it.

MA: … and six people were killed. Some of them are students. In that cafe. It’s a big challenge that you’re trying to keep on with your life, you know, online education, even though it’s a very tough thing. And the chances of getting killed are there. Going to a coffee place where you have… You might ask the questions [about] how they can get electricity. We have solar panels from before. I mean, none of that was allowed into Gaza after October 7th. We’ve had a historical problem with electricity that goes back to 2006. On June 25th, 2006, Hamas and other Palestinian factions kidnapped the Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit. On June 25th of 2006. As a result of that, Israel bombed the only power plant or power station in the Gaza Strip. Which gives Gaza 50% of its – let’s say 40% of its – power or electricity needs. Now, it was bombed and became non-functional. And when they repaired it a year after, even with repairing it, it’s not at full capacity.

So from that time, from the summer of 2006 until now, we’ve never had 24 hour electricity. I remember back then when Israel bombed, because we rely on two types, we rely on two sources, of electricity. We rely on an Israeli line that comes from Israel, that Israel supplies Gaza. With 120 megawatt for Gaza. And the power station gives Gaza – they have what they call four generators in  the power plant. Every generator capacity is about 25 megawatt. So supposedly, when the whole power plant is functioning with 100% function, the maximum that they give is 100 megawatt. So when, when, when Israel bombed the power station in 2006, we became only dependent on the line coming from Israel. So from that time, the summer of 2006, we started on a program called eight hours of electricity and eight hours of blackout. That’s when we started on this schedule. Eight hours electricity, eight hours blackout, then eight hours and et cetera. So basically some areas of Gaza would have electricity, other areas would not. And even as I mentioned to you, when the power station was repaired, it didn’t go to full capacity, so shortages continued. Now the one, the 120 megawatt one, never increased: from even before 2006 until October 7, it was only 120 megawatt. 

So when October 7 happened, you probably remember what the Israeli ex-minister of defense, Yoav Gallant said: those in Gaza are “human animals,” and because of that, “no food, no water, no electricity.” They cut off the electricity line that comes from Israel – disconnected it – and that supplied Gaza with electricity. And the power station ran out of fuel on the third day [after] October 7, because the power station relies on fuel supplied from Israel and paid for by the Palestinians to make it run. So what I was trying to say to you is that many households, schools, hospitals, public buildings were using solar panels for electricity. Some of these programs were funded by NGOs. Some of them were funded by private businesses. So I have to say that some of these solar panels, which were introduced into Gaza before October 7 – some of them are still functional until now. I mean, some of them have been completely destroyed by the Israeli bombing. We still have some of these solar panels where they use these solar panels to basically allow the two million people survive until now, where basically they use them to charge mobiles, charge computers, and have internet – not 24 hours, [but] sometimes. So when you speak about the two million people, most of them are in tents. Most of them are in shelters where they basically have no stable electricity and have no stable internet. So they have to go from one place to another place to charge their mobiles, charge their laptops, or get internet connection that is strong enough to download lectures, upload exams, papers, and et cetera. 

AD: Other than the few courses that you’ve been teaching, and with the reduced capacity and with all these problems, you mentioned that there was one student who had defended or was defending an MA thesis. Is there any other way … 

MA: He is in Egypt. I mean, the student was in Egypt and I was in Egypt during the winter break. So we had, it’s a committee made of four. It’s a shared committee, me and another, it’s Abed – no, it’s not Abed, but it’s another professor. So two of us were in Gaza. Two of the professors, me and another professor, were in Cairo and the student was in Cairo. So we did it online. 

AD: Is there, is there a way other than this, that the life of your department continues? Like, you know, are you in touch with faculty, let’s say to plan for courses next year?

MA: WhatsApp. That’s one way of communication. I mean, the chairperson communicates with us on WhatsApp all the time, you know: the courses that are going to be offered fall semester, winter semester, who’s going to be teaching. I mean, in my case, you know, I was politely asked to voluntarily, you know, teach one class per semester because I’m not, you know, I don’t have to – but I felt, you know, this is part of my civic duty to my university and to my people to do.

So we communicate on WhatsApp all the time, but the university has an application, which is called Moodle, where basically you communicate. I mean, I think even students communicate with me with WhatsApp. […] Especially in times of crisis. So my number, my mobile number is my Palestinian mobile number is with everyone. So I get student messages on WhatsApp, having problems with downloading lectures, missing the exam. Now there’s another way of communication, which is on the Moodle. The Moodle application is [so that] the students can communicate, send messages, but it’s a way of communicating with students where they receive their exams, where they receive their lectures, and where they also upload their answers on the Moodle system application. 

AD: Those – the Moodle and the student records and things – are they kept in Jordan? 

MA: Yes, after October 7, the system collapsed. I know that there was no access to the university website. There was no access to the Moodle. So what the university administration did is that they were housed by Al-Batra University in Jordan. I think Al-Batra, if I’m not mistaken. Al-Batra, you know – as I think part of their support for Al-Azhar – they allowed them … the server of Al-Batra also has become a server to our students. So that’s where student records, transcripts, everything is kept now, on a Jordanian university [server]. I think it’s Al-Batra University. 

RA: You mentioned earlier that most of your, most of your library was your personal library at home and you don’t know what happened to it now. Would it be okay to ask if your home was targeted? If you want to talk about that. And you know of any other faculty whose homes were destroyed or targeted? Where are they now, like some of your colleagues? If it would be okay to talk about them.

MA: In my case, the building where I used to live is still standing, but the Israeli soldiers were inside the building and were inside my apartment because when there was a ceasefire on January 19th and the Palestinians, including my siblings who were in the south of Gaza, were allowed to go back to the north of Gaza, our family’s two houses in Jabalia were completely destroyed. I’m [from] a family of six brothers and I’m the seventh, okay? Two of my brothers are in Brazil – they were evacuated from Gaza, just like me, from Gaza to Brazil. I was evacuated to Egypt. I have still four brothers and three stepbrothers […] who live in the family, in two houses in Gaza, which were completely destroyed. And when the ceasefire came into effect on January 19th and the Palestinians were allowed to go back to the north of Gaza, basically my siblings ended up living in a tent. So I asked my younger brother to go and check my apartment. I knew that the building was standing, but there was a lot of damage because of the bombing and the soldiers were inside the apartment. So what he did, he cleaned the apartment and now he is staying in my apartment. Instead of staying in a tent, my brother, my youngest brother, is staying in my apartment. But basically there were no windows, so he had to create new – I can show you the pictures – windows of plastic. He had to basically get a door made of steel because the multi-lock door was shattered or crashed. So yes, the building is where I used to live, it’s still standing. And my brother is living now within my apartment, who was able to clean it and make it, you know, at least better than living in a tent. But with no electricity, with no running water, they have to go and, you know, put water in gallons or whatever you want to call it. There is no running water, and there is no electricity, and there is no internet, so basically he is using the apartment as a place to sleep or to stay with his wife and children. 

AD: Thinking about the future, what do you hope will happen to Al-Azhar University, and do you think that you will have a role in whatever [happens]? I mean, I know this is really difficult from this particular standing point to even imagine, but, you know, if you were to kind of think about what comes next for your institution and for your own involvement with it, what would you say that would be? 

MA: To be honest with you, it’s a very tough thing. When you think of Gaza now, it has turned into a piece of rubble. I’m not saying this. The UN is saying this. International agencies are saying 80% of Gaza households are completely destroyed. There was just a report by UNRWA and I think another UN agency where they said more than two-thirds of Gaza’s schools are destroyed. I know most universities are either destroyed or like Al-Azhar. I mean, imagine Al-Azhar, which has two campuses, and now even if there is going to be a ceasefire anytime soon, which is unlikely anyway, and you have to squeeze all of the students in one campus. Where they were in two campuses, now they have to be in one campus. In my opinion, it’s gonna take a long time to rebuild Gaza, to make it again a place to live, which I don’t think [will] be easy. 

I know that there are many Palestinians who don’t want to leave, who want to stay in Gaza no matter how bad the situation is, but I know that the Israeli occupation forces are making it, day after day, impossible to live in that part of the land with the bombing, with the starvation. It’s an intentional policy of expelling the Palestinians from Gaza and Netanyahu speaks about it publicly. I mean, he talked about this a few days ago where he said he knows that some of the Palestinians want to leave, so it’s like he’s making it as if the Palestinians want to leave voluntarily. But when you destroy the place and you make people die because of starvation, it’s no longer voluntary. It becomes compulsory evacuation. You either face death or leave. People would leave because they don’t want to die. 

Anyway, personally speaking, I think I have reached the point where I’m too old to start all over again. I don’t think I have the capacity or I have the energy, personally speaking, to start again. I’m 60 years old now. I’m going to be 61 in November. I have another four years to retire. And I don’t think, you know … I can just, you know … I wish I [could] go back, but I don’t want to spend the rest of, you know, what’s left of my life or my career life … because you’re going to have to start from – again, you’re going to have to start from zero, ground zero. I have to be honest with you, I don’t really know what will happen. I have to basically keep myself and my family on survival for the next four years until I retire, because before I retire, I’m not eligible to get pension or any anything from the Palestinian Pension Fund, until I reach the age of 65. So I have to basically – in order to avoid going back to Gaza in the next four years, which is unlikely, as I mentioned – I have personally to try to keep myself in a job here or there or somewhere until I reach the age of retirement. But I have to say that I have some colleagues who did not leave Gaza, who are still in Gaza. They live in a tent. Their homes were completely destroyed. And they will basically try to rebuild – again. They’re much younger than me. 

They’re probably thinking of [how] the option of just going somewhere else won’t be as easy. And to tell you the truth, we, the Palestinians, have a bad experience with displacement. When 700,000 to 800,000 Palestinians were expelled or fled from Palestine in 1948, they became refugees, like my family. But we were lucky that we – my family – ended up in Gaza at least. Others, who ended up in Lebanon or Syria, they faced much more worse circumstances in terms of employment. Maybe we were not that lucky to be in Gaza because of what we are going through now, but at least compared to Palestinian refugees who ended up in Lebanon and Syria, we were in much better circumstances. So leaving again would make you ask the question, what will happen to my family? What will happen to me if I end up in the countries that are being offered now? Somaliland, Somalia, Sudan: that’s the countries that are being debated or discussed between Israel, some U.S. officials, and these countries. Somaliland, Somalia, South Sudan, I think. There were rumors about Indonesia taking some Palestinians. 

I don’t want to speak on behalf of the Palestinians, but I know […] most people want to leave because of death, because of starvation, because the place is not livable at all. I have siblings who still live there. I know what’s going on there. So some people will probably stay, but personally, even though it’s not morally correct or it’s not politically correct to say that I will not go back, I am not in a position to lie and tell you that I plan to go back once this war is over. No. I’m trying to just find a different way where I can basically, as I just mentioned, survive the next four years until I reach retirement age, where at least I’m able to survive on my pension – both me and my family. 

AD: Any final things you’d like to say? 

MA: Look, it’s very painful and very sad. This is happening to two million Palestinians in Gaza. The whole world is watching – live. Killing of the Palestinians and starving them is done. No one can claim that they didn’t know about it. No one can claim they didn’t hear about it. It’s a very difficult situation. So, again, I hope that there will be some serious intervention from the U.S. administration, from the international community, to stop this. That’s what I’m hoping for. 

AD: Thank you so much.