ISTANBUL

Witnesses at the Gaza Tribunal’s public hearings on Friday urged international jurists and governments to treat the destruction of Gaza’s schools and universities as more than collateral damage, calling it a deliberate assault on the territory’s future.

“My name is Osama Alostta. I’m 23 years old,” one witness told the panel in testimony that traced the trajectory of a young life interrupted by years of war, siege, and displacement.

Identified in the tribunal program as Osama Alostta, the student described losing homes, neighborhoods, and his university within weeks of Oct. 7 and ultimately being forced to choose between safety abroad and family left behind in Gaza.

“Five minutes later, I received a message from the university administration saying, ‘For your safety, the school will be closed until further notice,’” he told the tribunal. “I thought maybe it would be a week, just 10 days... On Oct. 19, they destroyed my neighborhood. I was living 3 kilometers away due to the explosion.”

Alostta spent a year and a half in Türkiye. “I missed home deeply and wanted to repatriate since… I started a new semester just 10 days before the 7th of October. I stayed in Gaza for another six months, and eventually I went to the UK. But this time, I left my family behind without knowing whether they would survive or not.”

Osama’s account captured the personal costs behind the statistics the witnesses cited: mass displacement, the deaths of faculty, and the near-total destruction of campuses, libraries, and laboratories.

He also highlighted the collapse of basic services and the struggle for survival, saying: “Although we tried to make our state a better place to live, I remember going 14 days without showering, so I decided there was no point in my being in that year, and it was no longer safe…”

“When they destroy a university, it’s not only a view that falls; it’s the future that comes crashing down,” he said. “This was no accident... But we refuse to disappear. We are not numbers.”

“This story is not just mine. This case is not special to me as a person. There is an entire generation of students who were killed, silenced, and displaced,” he added.

'Our society is not an body_abstract world'

Malek Alsweirki, a Palestinian student and scholar who testified online under the heading “Scholasticide in Gaza: A Witness to the Systematic Destruction of Education,” recounted schools and university buildings turned to rubble and basements and shelters converted into precarious classrooms.

Alsweirki urged the tribunal to recognize the human consequences behind the statistics.

“The jury now should be mindful that our society is not a body abstract world,” she said, describing schools that once hosted classrooms, libraries, and community life reduced to rubble and basements turned into provisional shelters.

Alsweirki described how teachers and students were frequently displaced and how the loss of school buildings disrupted social networks and opportunities for generations.

“All the students in the class had to attend the class because it was too dangerous for students to travel to other classes because of their constant involvement. Meanwhile, most houses and apartment buildings have been stopped and destroyed by these schools that is basically for non-Basic families who didn't support their children.

“This mess, basically, is supposed to give shelters for lost resources. And even these shelters were abandoned. The basements, too dangerous for children, became the only places for their families to hide.”

'Learning amid genocide'

Wesam Amer, a former dean of the Faculty of Communication and Languages at Gaza University in Palestine, testified about the broader intellectual toll and told the panel that Gaza’s academic community is bearing a crushing burden.

Amer framed what is happening in Gaza as more than episodic damage.

“What I describe today is not just a body abstract; it's an experience. It's not only my experience, my personal experience. It's an experience for hundreds of academics and students in the world,” he said.

“Learning amid genocide,” he said, summarizing what he and colleagues have tried to preserve in the face of sustained attacks on educational infrastructure, including libraries, laboratories, and archives.

“Learning amid what is, I'm calling it, what my generation has suffered. History is repeating itself,” Amer added.

“We will continue to teach, to learn, and to dream,” Amer added, calling for international support to preserve what remains of Gaza’s academic life and to save “the generations of students, academics, and researchers.”

Gaza Tribunal

The four-day public session marks the culmination of a yearlong effort by international jurists, scholars, and civil society figures to document alleged crimes committed against Palestinians.

The tribunal featured Friday expert presentations and eyewitness testimonies on starvation, ecocide, domicide, and the targeting of civilians and public infrastructure, including the health care and education systems.

Presided over by Richard Falk, former UN special rapporteur on human rights in the Palestinian territories, the tribunal aims to produce a comprehensive “people’s record” of what participants describe as genocide, apartheid, and systemic violations of international law in Gaza.

The tribunal’s jury of conscience includes Kenize Mourad, Christine Chinkin, Chandra Muzaffar, Ghada Karmi, Sami Al-Arian, and Biljana Vankovska.