Skills to rebuild
Salwa Abu Elhaj, a business administration graduate in Gaza, said the offer of a funded place in KU Leuven’s Master of Communication Sciences program was “one of the happiest moments of my life.”
Abu Elhaj was inspired to pivot to communications by her experience pursuing her undergraduate degree under the stress of war and, eventually, famine. She observed how the NGOs that became a “lifeline” in Gaza struggled to get their message to donors and international partners. Resolved to keep studying, she walked for up to an hour in search of a decent internet connection to submit scholarship applications and attend interviews.
Between Abu Elhaj and her fellow scholars are many of the skills Gaza will need to rebuild — doctors, virologists, computer scientists. Ahmed Alsalibi, who has been offered a postdoc position at ULB, studies how resource-constrained health authorities can use AI to efficiently dispatch ambulances to where they’re needed most. Zuhair Dardona, also handpicked by ULB, plans to research how the conflagration of war, displacement and infrastructure damage affects the spread of infectious disease in his home city.
Those barring the students’ evacuation “are destroying dreams and preventing people who have ambition, passion, and a genuine desire to contribute to and rebuild their countries from pursuing their futures,” Abu Elhaj said.
In their letter to De Wever and Prévot, the scholars said they fully understood that Belgium must maintain its immigration and security requirements. “We are not asking for these requirements to be waived. We are asking for a practical and lawful way to fulfil them in the exceptional circumstances we are facing,” the letter said.
The European Commission has helped to organize evacuations from Gaza, but only for medical treatment. A Commission spokesperson said they were aware of the students’ case, but that any evacuation would be a matter for “the member states concerned.”
Other European countries continue to welcome students from Gaza. Italy established a “university corridor” for Palestinian students in May 2026, allowing more than 70 students to take their places in Italian universities — although dozens are still waiting for clearance to leave. The U.K. has also established its own scheme for scholarship students from Gaza.
Weyembergh said the universities had put these examples to Belgian officials who had cited “logistical issues” in the way of evacuations. “They say it’s impossible,” she said. “But it doesn’t seem to us that it is.”
