The Islamic University of Gaza.. A history of Israeli targeting News

On the fifth day of the ongoing aggression against Gaza stripThe occupation warplanes launched a violent wave of unprecedented aerial bombardment on the main headquarters of the Islamic University west of Gaza City, resulting in its complete destruction.

The bombing targeted the administration building, the central library, the laboratory building, and the Jerusalem, Taiba, and Al-Luhaidan study buildings. Later, the occupation army showed a video recording of the violent raids on the university, which it described as “an important center for the political and military power of the terrorist organization, and it works to qualify, train, develop, and produce combat means.”

This unprecedented destruction constituted a new milestone in the history of the Islamic University’s confrontations with the occupation, from its first inception until today. So what was the story of these confrontations?

From the tent to the sanctuary

The Islamic University of Gaza was established in 1978 by a decision from the Al-Azhar Institute, from which the number of high school graduates increased, without them having the opportunity to receive higher education within the Gaza Strip. A committee formed by the Institute decided to establish a university that included faculties of Sharia, law, and fundamentals of religion, and a department for the Arabic language that later formed the nucleus of the Faculty of Arts. .

The university began its journey with 25 students and a faculty of 5 lecturers, one of whom holds a doctorate degree, and 4 hold master’s degrees.

Among the tents that were later turned into temporary classrooms, colleges were opened successively until 1985, when the university included the colleges of fundamentals of religion, education, commerce, and science, and an attempt to open the College of Nursing in 1986, but the decision was rejected by the occupation authorities, which were in charge of the civil and military administration of the besieged sector.

The Islamic University witnessed a new start in the early 1990s, with the opening of the College of Nursing and Engineering, the expansion of its buildings and campus, in addition to hiring lecturers from the West Bank as part of its teaching staff. By 2006, the university had included the College of Medicine and Information Technology.

It also expanded at the beginning of the second millennium and built many university buildings and facilities within the main campus of the Islamic University, located west of Gaza City. It accommodated thousands of students and hundreds of faculty members and administrative employees. It also established many affiliated bodies and facilities, including:

• Deanship of Community Service and Continuing Education
• Business and technology incubator
• Materials and soil laboratories
• the central Library
• Fatwa Committee
• Holy Quran Radio
• Al-Kitab TV
• Heritage Architecture Centre
• Oral History Center
• Food Analysis Center

In addition, the university included laboratory buildings, a major conference hall, a number of specialized technical and technical institutes, centers for psychology and journalism, and the Science Community College, which later became independent to become the University College of Science and Technology, which enabled it to host and incubate many scientific and academic events at the level of the Gaza Strip and Palestine.

Following the Israeli withdrawal from Gaza in 2005, the Islamic University expanded to the liberated governorates of the Gaza Strip, building a central campus in Khan Yunis in the south of the Gaza Strip, a campus in Nuseirat on the lands of the defunct settlements, and a third campus in the north of the besieged Gaza Strip.

Years of fire and confrontation

Since its founding, the Islamic University has been subjected to continuous attacks by the occupation army and its administration in the Gaza Strip, which continued to raid its headquarters and arrest its students and faculty members, in addition to closing it for years during the first intifada due to the prominent participation of its students and professors in the activities of the intifada.

In the 1980s, the Fatah movement disputed with supporters of the Islamic movement from which it emerged HamasIn attempts to control the university’s administration, it became a major stronghold for Hamas, as its board of trustees included a number of the movement’s historical leaders, including Sheikh Ahmed Yassin and engineer Ismail Abu Shanab etc.

The Islamic University also maintains a long list of its graduates who later formed important streams of Palestinian organizational work, including: Ismail Haniyeh AndYahya Al-Sanwar AndMuhammad Al-Deif Izz al-Din Sheikh Khalil and Ibrahim al-Maqadma, who were members of the university’s successive student councils. The list also includes the former leader of the Fatah movement. Muhammad Dahlan Who was the head of the Fatah Youth Organization at the university during his youth years.

From occupation to power

With the signing of the Oslo Accords and the establishment of the Palestinian Authority, the Islamic University remained vulnerable to targeting because it was considered a major stronghold of Hamas, as it was subjected to many raids and arrest campaigns by Palestinian security forces.

This campaign was summed up by the famous clip of Major General Ghazi al-Jabali, the first commander of the Palestinian police during the era of the Palestinian Authority, when he described the Islamic University as a “den” and pledged to control it and uproot “the extremist elements of Hamas and Islamic Jihad” from its roots.

The university campus witnessed numerous clashes between Hamas and Fatah supporters at Al-Azhar University, which is adjacent to the Islamic University, but the bloodiest incident in the university’s history was in October 2001, after the Palestinian Authority police fired live bullets to disperse a student demonstration that took place outside the Islamic University in protest against the American war. On Afghanistan, killing 3 demonstrators, including a child, and wounding 55 others.

The massacre of students at the Islamic University, in October 2001, resulted in the outbreak of violent clashes at that time with the Authority’s police forces, in which 10 of its members were injured in the confrontations, before the circle expanded to a number of neighborhoods in Gaza City, which witnessed the burning of the Authority’s security headquarters in the Beach Camp. Revelation of Sheikh Radwan.

Under fire

With the Hamas movement winning the legislative elections in 2006, and the Gaza Strip entering into successive waves of clashes between Hamas and Fatah and the security services, the Islamic University was in the eye of the storm due to its proximity to Al-Azhar University, which is affiliated with the Fatah movement.

The vicinity of the two universities witnessed many student clashes between supporters of the Islamic Bloc and the Fatah Youth Organization, which sometimes developed into armed clashes between the security services and the Executive Force of the Ministry of Interior, which is run by Hamas.

In February 2007, the National Authority’s President’s guard forces stormed the main headquarters of the Islamic University in Gaza, and set fire to a number of buildings, including the Central Library and the Great Conference Hall.

In May of the same year, the vicinity of the Islamic University witnessed violent clashes in which RPG and mortar shells were used after the Presidential Guard forces attempted to storm the university buildings again, and the Al-Qassam Brigades responded to the storming, threatening “anyone who thinks of storming the university that his path to that goal will not be paved.” With flowers, he will come out carried on his shoulders.”

Occupation again

During the Israeli aggression in December 2008, warplanes bombed the central laboratory building at the Islamic University and leveled it to the ground, causing severe damage to a number of buildings. The occupation justified the bombing at the time by saying that the Islamic University’s laboratories were used to “manufacture and develop missiles and that its halls were used to hold meetings.” to the leadership of Hamas in Gaza.

In 2012, the occupation launched a new campaign of incitement against the Islamic University, after UNESCO decided to grant it a seat in it, accusing, through its Foreign Ministry, the university and the Chemical Engineering Department in particular of supporting the military wing of Hamas, to which the university’s president at the time, Dr. Kamalin Shaath, responded. He denied what he called “ready-made slanders,” pointing out that the university does not have a chemical engineering department in the first place.

In the third war on Gaza in 2014, warplanes again bombed the Islamic University, targeting the administration building, which was partially destroyed, in addition to many of its buildings being severely damaged as a result of the occupation using heavy bombs from F-16 aircraft to bomb the building.

The occupation army said at the time that the bombing of the university came in response to its use to “collect donations for Hamas in the name of university conferences,” claiming that it “constitutes an important military operational center for the movement’s military wing.”

After it was bombed during the current Israeli aggression on Gaza, the occupation army showed a video recording of the violent raids on this university, which the official spokesman for the occupation army accused of having “transformed under the rule of Hamas into an important center of political and military power in the terrorist organization and works to qualify, train, develop and produce combat means.”

As the genocide continues in the Gaza Strip and is approaching the completion of its first month as of the writing of these lines, the Islamic University is still out of service like the rest of the universities and colleges in the besieged Strip, without any possible visions of the mechanism by which it will return to work after the cessation of the aggression, with the complete destruction of its campus. President.