From Gaza to Graduation: How Palestinian students rebuilt their education in Lahore

LAHORE: When Reema Hamid arrived in Pakistan, she was carrying an unfinished degree and the uncertainty of a life uprooted by war.

A final-year dental student at Gaza's Al-Azhar University, Reema had expected to graduate and begin the next chapter of her career. Instead, the war that began in October 2023 forced her and her family to leave Gaza for Egypt.

Her education stopped there.

“There was no chance for me to continue my education,” she recalls. “I was at my final year.”

Then came an unexpected route forward: a scholarship that brought Reema and other Palestinian students to Pakistan, where they could resume the studies that had been interrupted.

Months later, she was no longer a student whose education had been suspended. She was completing her clinical training and preparing to graduate in Lahore.

For Reema and her fellow Palestinian students, the graduation ceremony represents something that goes beyond a university qualification.

It marks the completion of an education that war had interrupted and the continuation of futures that might otherwise have been put on hold indefinitely.

A graduation shaped by war

The Palestinian students completed their studies at the University College of Medicine and Dentistry, a constituent college of the University of Lahore.

Their arrival in Pakistan was part of the G-HOPE initiative, through which the University of Lahore welcomed its first group of Palestinian students in October 2024.

The initiative brought together the University of Lahore, the Alkhidmat Foundation, the Government of Pakistan and international humanitarian partners.

For the BDS students, the program provided an opportunity to complete the remaining clinical training required for their degrees.

But behind the institutional framework was a much more personal reality.

These were students whose education had been interrupted not by academic failure or choice, but by a war that had forced them from their homes.

Their journey to graduation therefore began long before they put on their graduation gowns.

From Gaza to Lahore

Reema's story is one of the many paths created by displacement.

After leaving Gaza for Egypt, she faced the prospect of an unfinished dental degree. Pakistan gave her a way back into education.

At first, Lahore was unfamiliar: a new country, new traditions and a new academic environment.

But the students gradually found something they had not necessarily expected when they arrived — a sense of belonging.

Reema remembers the university staff making an effort to ensure that the students were not simply attending classes, but adapting to life around them.

“They were concerned about well-being, about peace of mind,” she says.

That support extended beyond the hospital and classroom.

Friendships formed. Students took part in university life. Ordinary experiences began to return.

For Reema, Pakistan eventually became more than the place where she finished her education.

“The people here did not make us regret coming to Pakistan for a second,” she says. “They treat us as a family member.”

A journey that crossed borders

For Yusuf Alhelou, the route to completing his medical education was even more complicated.

He left Gaza after completing two years of medical studies and travelled to Egypt. He later went to Turkey, where he continued his third year, before returning to Egypt.

Then came Pakistan.

By the time he arrived at the University of Lahore, he had already experienced the disruption of repeatedly leaving one place and adapting to another.

Yet his experience in Pakistan surprised him.

“I came here without knowing anything,” he says. “I don't know what I'm expecting. But what I found is really kindness, friendship and welcoming.”

At the university, he was able to continue his medical education with the support of doctors and teachers.

But some of his strongest memories have little to do with lectures or examinations.

He remembers Pakistani people discovering that he was from Palestine and immediately showing affection and concern.

Even taxi rides became part of the story.

Yusuf laughs as he recalls drivers sometimes refusing to accept his fare because he was Palestinian.

For someone who had spent years moving between countries because of circumstances beyond his control, those small encounters mattered.

“We feel actually it's like really a second home in here,” he says.

More than a degree

For Aya Mahmoud El-Zebda, a Palestinian dentist from Gaza, completing her studies in Pakistan became a symbol of something larger.

Her journey, she says, was not simply about education.

It was about hope and a new beginning.

Pakistan gave her an experience that extended beyond academic training friendships, memories and a feeling of belonging far from home.

“I arrived here as a student,” she says, “but I am leaving now with an experience that shaped me as a person — and a degree.”

That distinction is important.

For displaced students, education is not only about acquiring qualifications. It can provide structure when almost everything else has been disrupted.

A classroom can become a place of continuity.

A university can become a temporary home.

And a graduation ceremony can become proof that a future interrupted by war has not necessarily been lost.

Looking beyond graduation

The students are now thinking about what comes next.

Reema hopes to continue with higher education and pursue a master's degree.

Yusuf wants eventually to return to Gaza and help his family and his people.

Aya plans to return to Libya to join her family before eventually returning to Gaza.

Her ambition is not simply to go back.

She wants to help rebuild.

“We will go back to Gaza and rebuild it, by our hands,” she says.

That hope is shared by Yusuf, who speaks of thousands of students in Gaza whose education has also been interrupted.

He hopes they will be given opportunities to continue their studies, just as he and his classmates were.

The students' journeys therefore do not end with graduation.

Their degrees are a beginning — a chance to become doctors and dentists, and, they hope, eventually to use those skills in rebuilding the communities they were forced to leave.

A second home, for now

There is a common thread running through their stories.

They came to Pakistan because war had disrupted their education.

But they found more than classrooms and clinical training.

They found people who welcomed them, teachers who helped them continue, friends who made an unfamiliar country feel familiar, and a university that became part of a journey they had never planned to take.

Aya says she will leave Pakistan carrying “a piece of Pakistan” in her heart.

Reema speaks of being treated like family.

Yusuf calls it a second home.

Their graduation is therefore not simply the story of Palestinian students completing their studies in Lahore.

It is the story of what education can offer when everything around it has been disrupted — a sense of continuity, belonging and, perhaps most importantly, a reason to keep looking towards the future.

For these students, the road from Gaza to graduation has been long and uncertain.

But it has not ended with what they lost.

It has opened with what they still hope to build.