In the midst of a Gaza Strip facing annihilation, where the Israeli army is leveling the last buildings still standing and death lurks at every corner, Roua Nasrallah is trying to pass her tawjihi (high school graduation exam). "Yesterday I took the first life and earth sciences exam, today it was technology, and tomorrow it will be physics," the young woman told Le Monde by phone (Israel bans foreign journalists from entering the Gaza Strip).

Nasrallah, 19, is one of the 27,000 students registered for the online exam organized by the Palestinian Ministry of Education. She and her classmates had just started their senior year in September 2023 when their schooling was brutally halted by Hamas's October 7 attack and Israel's military response. Their dreams of earning this first diploma collapsed with their schools. According to the United Nations, 97% of Gaza's educational institutions have been destroyed or damaged by Israeli strikes, and 15,000 school-aged youth have been killed. "The first year of the war was nothing but suffering, with forced displacements. There was simply no way to keep studying," said the high schooler, currently displaced with her family in the Nuseirat camp in the center of the enclave.

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