The main building of Israa University was blown up south of Gaza City.

The administration of Israa University condemns the brutal aggression that has targeted its educational facilities, the latest of which was the destruction of the main graduate studies and undergraduate colleges building south of Gaza City. This came after nearly seventy days of the Zionist army’s occupation of the building, using it as a military base for its vehicles and a sniper outpost to target unarmed civilians in the areas of Al-Rashid Street, Al-Maghraqa, and Al-Zahra, as well as a temporary detention center for interrogating civilians before their transfer. The Zionist aggression was not limited to the main building alone; it also targeted the National Museum, which Israa University had always taken pride in establishing as the first licensed national museum by the Ministry of Antiquities in the country. It housed over three thousand rare archaeological artifacts, which occupation soldiers and officers looted before blowing up the museum building to cover up the traces of their crime. The occupation army also destroyed the buildings of the first and only university hospital in the Gaza Strip (the second in Palestine), along with the medical and engineering laboratories, nursing training labs, media training studio, the mock courtroom of the Law College, and graduation halls—after looting their valuable contents, which students from various colleges had long used to enrich their research and carry out curricular and extracurricular activities. The cafeteria building was not spared from the aggression, having been razed to the ground from the first day. Additionally, occupation aircraft bombed and destroyed the university’s main mosque within the southern campus. The occupation also targeted other university facilities with bombing and looting, most notably the Intermediate Studies ("Diploma") campus in northern Gaza and the Continuing Education and Vocational Training Center in Al-Rimal neighborhood—both of which had recently become shelters for displaced people. For Israa University, whose facilities were destroyed, buildings blown up, and financial assets looted, this was never the true loss. The real loss was the martyrs among its students, professors, and staff, who ascended as heroes on the path to liberating the homeland, attaining the highest honor through their sacrifice. The targeting of educational institutions in Gaza during this aggression is part of a long-standing, systematic approach that has never ceased since the beginning of this conflict. Through it, the occupation has sought to spread ignorance, exclude our people from the march of knowledge and civilization, assassinate scholars, and expel intellectuals—the pillars of society—from Palestine with the malicious assistance of Western immigration institutions. Yet, it has faced utter failure in the face of our people’s unwavering will to continue education and build human civilization against the moral and societal backwardness and the collapse of human values of this entity that claims to be civilized—and against all its supporters, from racist governments to fascist organizations and entities. May Allah Almighty have mercy on Palestine’s scholars and righteous martyrs. We pledge to continue the march of knowledge in the face of the Zionist machine of ignorance and destruction.