From lecture halls to displacement tents… Umm Thaer lives in the rubble of Gaza University | news

Tents spread out in its destroyed squares, while the voices of students faded, to be replaced by the voices of children and the movement of displaced people among the remains of collapsed buildings. Umm Thaer al-Kafarna was displaced from the town of Beit Hanoun after her home was destroyed. She took refuge in the university before it was targeted, then she was forced to flee south after receiving a warning of an imminent bombing.

The displaced woman recounts how her children returned to the university after the bombing to find the buildings completely destroyed, saying: “We are forced to stay here despite the destruction, until we are allowed to return to our destroyed towns on the border.”

The university’s courtyards are witnessing the spread of worn-out tents erected by displaced people between the cracked walls, and bulldozers are moving to remove the rubble, while residents are trying with their own hands to prepare the place to turn into a temporary shelter to protect them from the open air.

The displaced people express a deep fear of renewed war, and Umm Thaer warns that the return of fighting “means the complete end of life in Gaza.” She rejects the idea of ​​leaving her country despite the harsh conditions, stressing that she will stay “as long as there is a place on earth where one can stay.”

The university symbolizes the entire reality of Gaza, where displacement combines with the collapse of education and loss of security. The scene remains suspended between a fragile truce and an unknown fate, awaiting whether these squares will one day return to their academic mission or will remain a shelter for the displaced and a witness to the longest humanitarian crises in the modern era.