Writing against erasure: A geography of resistance in Gaza

Surviving erasure

In Gaza, geography is not just terrain on a map; it is a lived experience. It is our geography classrooms that witnessed our dreams before they turned into rubble, and it is our geography professors who taught us how to read and belong to the land. The assassination of Palestinian geographers, including professors and students who I describe below, are not just ‘collateral damage,’ but rather part of a systematic ‘scholasticide’ (OHCHR 2024) aimed at erasing us from memory and uprooting our awareness of place. This commentary is written in the shadow of that loss. In this short piece, I want to amplify the voice of Palestinian geography and its people, because at this moment, writing is our only way to survive erasure.

I am a graduate of the Department of Geography, Al-Aqsa University, in Gaza, and I am currently pursuing a Master’s degree in geography. I write not only as a scholar, but as a first-hand witness to the ongoing Israeli genocide, which includes the targetting of educational spaces and intellectual communities. Gaza is experiencing a ‘war against education itself’ (Lankarani 2025), with 60% of all education facilities having been destroyed by Israel, including archives, schools, public libraries, and every single University (Dader et al., 2024). But what does this scholasticide actually look like? As I write these words, my own university, Al-Aqsa University, in Khan Yunis, is now a refugee camp (Reuters 2025). What were once green squares with students walking to class, are now filled with dust and tents; what were once classrooms and places of learning, are now improvised spaces of shelter.

A few days ago I visited my displaced aunt, who, like thousands of others, lives inside the grounds of the university. The Lancet reports that 84% of Gaza’s population have been displaced at least once since 2023, and over 1 in 5 of the displaced (20.5%) now live in converted public buildings such as universities and schools (Spagat et al., 2026). As I got to my university I was confronted by a flood of memories. I remembered my first day as a geography student, when my parents dropped me off. I remembered every tree. I remembered the day we celebrated my childhood friend Shahd’s birthday at the university, when we decorated a tree with colorful balloons and placed a cake on a tablecloth. I remembered our graduation ceremony. As I stood in the university amongst the tents and the rubble, I wept bitterly for Shahd, who was killed by Israel on 27 February 2024, alongside her family. Shahd was an outstanding geography student who has tragically become one of at least 5479 students estimated to have been martyred (OHCHR 2024).

Before greeting my aunt, I said to my brother, who was accompanying me on this visit, “Let’s take a short walk on this path,” which was once my favourite spot on campus. But I didn’t find my geography classroom. Instead, I found more tents filling the area. The “Geography Studio” [مرسم الجغرافيا] was not just my favourite corner in a university building, but my parallel world. I used to spend 3 hours a day in a ritual of “the calm before creativity.” I remembered my favourite chair that I loved to sit on inside the hall, in front of a very large window that once overlooked a large green area, now turned to dust. At that moment, I remembered the first tremor of my hand when my feet stepped into that place during my first geography lecture in the department. I used to look with awe at the geographic equipment filling the hall, but that tension soon turned, thanks to field training, into a geomorphological love story with the land. The geography studio became my refuge; instead of the noise of the courtyards, I would rush to be alone with the “Theodolite” and the scanner camera, which transformed from mere measuring tools into loyal friends.

I approached the room where my aunt and her family are displaced. It is not a room inside a house; it is a hall inside a university. The same hall where we once prepared for exams at the end of the semester. Every part of the room reminded me of my favorite teacher, Dr Abdel Nasser Al-Saqqa. To us students, Dr Al-Saqqa was not just a name on a lecture schedule, he was “the land,” he was “the father.” The terrain of Palestine was embodied in him through its steadfastness. I remember his lessons on the “Right of Return” and Resolution 194, and how he planted in us the belief that the refugee will one day return to his home.

Dr Abdel Nasser told us a lot about his four children and his wife who live in Belgium. He could have joined them, choosing a safe life there, but he chose to stay in Gaza, out of loyalty to his students and devotion to his academic mission (see Abu Sitta 2024a). I remember his last post on Facebook, when he wrote about the pain of communication blackouts and how days passed without being able to hear his children’s voices. He wrote with nostalgia: “Perhaps more beautiful days will bring us together,” but the occupation’s missiles were faster than his dream, and he rose as a martyr in Khan Yunis in early January 2024. The OHCHR (2024) estimates that at least 261 teachers and 95 university professors have been killed by Israel.

Today, when I look at the empty teaching podium in the hall, I realize that Israel did not just kill a geography teacher, but assassinated a “compass” that was guiding us toward our homeland. He taught us how to see in geography a face of truth. “Abu Mustafa”, as we called him, departed before the ‘more beautiful days’ could bring him together with his family, but he left us what is more lasting. Dr Abdel Nasser Al-Saqqa will remain our compass; we see him in every mountain slope, and we hear his voice with every Palestinian terrain we studied at his hands. His memory is not limited by the pages of books; it extends as far as the land he loved and chose to remain steadfast upon.

Describing the genocide in Gaza and the killing of Dr Abdel Nasser Al-Saqqa, geographers have noted that ‘geographers, too, have not escaped Israel’s necropolitical violence’ (Davies et al., 2026, 1). Indeed, this is true. Furthermore, Dr Abdel Nasser Al-Saqqa is not the only geography lecturer to have been killed. In December 2023, his colleague Dr Wiesam Essa, who was Head of the Geography Department at Al-Aqsa University, was also martyred when his apartment was severely damaged by Israeli bombs (RGS 2024). Today, as I navigate the depths of my Master’s studies, I find myself lost in front of the (GIS) program screen without his help. I feel the keyboard as if my fingers are searching for the guidance of Dr Wiesam Essa, who used to simplify the most complex technical operations for us with a confident smile. Dr Wiesam Essa founded our Geospatial Data Center, and his death was not just a personal absence, but an intimate scholasticide that has left us technologically orphaned; for how can I complete my maps when the hand that used to correct them has been killed?

Let me tell you who Dr Wiesam Essa was. The name “Dr Wiesam” was synonymous with academic precision and rigor, but it was also a title for the tenderness that dwells in a father’s heart. I remember my friend “Lulu” who insisted on registering for his courses despite his “low” grades, saying with gratitude: “The grade doesn’t matter to me compared to that wealth of knowledge that only he provides.” The echo of his booming laughter still rings in the corridors of my memory, especially that day when we were training on the (GPS) device; when our colleague “Noor” shouted with childish wonder: “Doctor! Is it possible that I am watching my house from here while I am inside the lab?” That laugh was not just a sound, but a celebration of our ability as Palestinians to possess the tools of science to understand our land and capture its details.

The scholasticide impacts in small ways, too. Because my university has been destroyed, my geography course is now taught online. What once was a short and pleasant walk across a leafy campus is now a two-hour return journey along winding, broken roads, just to find internet access in a café. I come home exhausted at the end of each day, my backpack weighed down with my laptop, charger, and essentials. Today, as I walked away from the devastation, I am reminded of the day I was displaced—for the second time—from Rafah in May 2024 (Abu Sitta 2024b), when we returned to my city, Khan Yunis, where I was born and lived. When we visited the rubble of our house, I found my drawings torn; I found the atlas worn out from the rain on it all winter. I began to review my memories, and I cried profusely. A couple of minutes later, I saw my cousin coming from afar in beautiful clothes with an even more beautiful laugh. I felt that her eyes were laughing when she saw us coming to visit them. The first thing she said was, “Did you bring me the Nutella crepe?” I laughed and said to her, “Yes, my little one,” while inside my mind I thought: Does Marah still remember the Nutella crepe despite everything she saw in the war? Does the little girl remember the details that we no longer notice?

In the face of the ongoing violence we are experiencing here in Gaza, and in the shadow of the devastating impacts this is having on so many—including geographers—I join Zena Agha and her co-authors’ appeal to academics around the world, that ‘now is not a time for equivocation or silence’ (Agha et al., 2023, 1). By highlighting the memory of my friend Shahd, and my geography mentors Dr Abdel Nasser Al-Saqqa and Dr Wiesam Essa, I write against their erasure. I write against the erasure of the countless other students, teachers, and professors whose lives have been cut short but whose presence continues to shape us. I am writing against the silence of geographers. The silence of academics who have the power to say something but choose not to. Writing today, with painful memories of happier times in a Gazan geography department, I write to restore these severed spaces; for the geographical knowledge planted in us by our academic mentors does not fall with the fall of buildings, but rather remains alive in us. The “compass” they left in our souls still points towards the truth, and towards Gaza, whose terrain we will redraw with our knowledge, our tears, and our unbreakable will.