For Amani Ahmed, his new life in Edinburgh with his family studying for a PhD at one of England's top universities is bittersweet. She checks her phone every day, fearing a text message that her mother, brother or sister has been found under the rubble. Gaza.
“I feel like I'm here physically, but mentally I'm in Gaza,” he said.
“I lost my father and could not even say goodbye to him. We had left Gaza, but we were caught up in our thoughts. It is where we lived, our families, relatives, friends… everyone is there. We check social media and we're afraid we're going to hear about someone being killed.
Ahmed was a lecturer and head of the Department of International Relations at Gaza Islamic University, which remains under rubble after the ongoing bombing.
But she counts herself lucky. He begins his PhD on scholarship at the University of Edinburgh in 2022, planning to travel between Gaza and Scotland. He returned to Edinburgh after summer vacation in early October 2023, only for a full-scale invasion of Israel to begin.
The war thwarted her plans to interview female entrepreneurs in the Gaza Strip for her research, but she found it difficult to leave her family, including her husband, two teenage daughters and an eight-year-old son.
“I was worried. I thought it would be better to go back to Gaza to be with the children, but the borders were closed,” she said. “Three days after the start of the war, there was heavy bombing and airstrikes around our residence in Gaza. The kids and my husband were there when the windows came crashing down in a dramatic blast, and glass was everywhere. My husband told me the kids panicked and he drove them to a friend's house in our car. Moving is not safe, but it is safer than staying at home.
Ahmed is one of the first two Palestinian researchers to receive support from the Council for Academics at Risk (GARA), which rescues academics at risk from persecution, violence and conflict.
The charity says Palestinians are in urgent need of aid for a large number of educators, sparking demand not seen since it was founded in the 1930s.
As of October 2023, it has received 120 applications from Palestinians. An academic who served as faculty dean at Gaza University has already received a visiting fellowship at Cambridge University.
The picture for Palestinian education is bleak. According to the Hamas-run Palestinian Health Authority, 120 educators have been killed since 7 October 2023, the UN found 80% of schools and universities destroyed.
Ahmed estimated the expenses at more than £10,000 in addition to their living expenses.
The family was finally reunited in April in time for Ramadan, when Ahmad would check his phone hourly for updates after months of sleepless nights. She vividly remembers the video her husband sent her of her son panicking and wailing, “I don't want to die.”
During that period, she was tormented by the scenes she saw on social media. “I saw families trapped in the rubble, children killed and some who were still alive but had lost their limbs. One day I woke up and was terrified that the house had been bombed.
His parents, sister, brother and own family stayed in the same house. “It is not an easy time. I was praying, but I couldn't do anything, I felt helpless. Sometimes there is no opportunity to talk to them due to power outages,” he said.
His sisters, brother and mother are now staying in tents in al-Nusirat camp, where there are regular bombings and evacuation orders.
Although they consider themselves lucky, his family faces challenges integrating into their new community. Ahmed's eldest daughter, 16, is “at a critical point in her life” and has gone from a brilliant student who wants to get a medical degree to struggling academically and not knowing how she will finance her studies.
A silver lining, however, is that Ahmed has presented her research to female entrepreneurs in the West Bank, a place she has never visited because Israel restricts movement. He was thrilled by the “unity and support” he felt from these entrepreneurs and the opportunity to contribute to research that would help rebuild his country's economy.
He continues to work at the university, helping migrant students get exchange opportunities in other countries. “I'm still engaged and hope I can support more after I get my PhD,” he said.
