‘Half my mind is still in Gaza’: Evacuated teacher begins studies in UK

It’s a very long way – in every possible sense – from Deir al-Balah in the centre of the Gaza Strip to Durham in north-eastern England.

“It’s another planet, not just another world,” says Sana el-Azab, who arrived in the cathedral city late last month after being evacuated to the UK with 33 other students.

“No-one can understand what I lived through in Gaza.”

In June, the 29-year-old former teacher was awarded a scholarship at Durham University to study educational leadership and change.

Weeks of uncertainty followed, as British politicians and academics lobbied for her – and dozens of other Gazan students with fully-funded places – to be allowed to come to the UK.

But in the dead of night, on 17 September, “the big moment” that she’d been waiting for finally arrived and Sana left her home first for Jordan, for biometric tests, and then for Durham.

This is the first time that she, and other Gaza students who have been brought to the UK, have spoken publicly.

“There’s no chance to continue your higher education in Gaza,” she told me. “All the universities are destroyed. There’s no education system at all anymore.”

The main campus of Al-Azhar University – one of the biggest and oldest Palestinian academic institutions, where Sana did a BA in English literature – is now reported to have been reduced to rubble by Israeli bombardment and controlled demolitions.