Dreams on Hold in Gaza

Three years of war have suspended a young student’s future—but not her determination.

The remains of Rawan Shaat’s home after it was bombed in July 2025.

Three years suspended in the same place. While everything and everyone around me seems to move forward, I remain here, unable to take even a single step ahead. That is what it feels like, despite all the effort I pour into my studies and into trying to salvage what remains of myself amid chaos and a war that has spared no one.

For years, I dreamed of studying in Europe after graduating from high school. That dream drove me to work relentlessly throughout those years. I longed for a dignified and expansive education, one unconstrained by the limitations of a besieged land, deprived of the resources needed to satisfy my scientific curiosity.

When I graduated from high school with a 92.1 percent average in the scientific stream, my family celebrated with immense pride. I still remember the joy in their faces and my own excitement as I imagined the path ahead.

But that moment also became my first harsh lesson: not everything we strive for comes to us in the way we imagine.

The circumstances at the time did not allow me to leave Gaza. I fell into deep disappointment. Yet I refused to abandon the dream entirely. Instead, I decided to work as hard as I could at home until an opportunity to study abroad might appear.

I enrolled at Al-Israa University in Gaza, majoring in Artificial Intelligence Engineering.

I attended university for only two weeks before something happened that had never crossed my mind—even in my worst imaginings.

War.

Dreams delayed

October 7, 2023 marked a turning point in the life of every person in Gaza. Each of us carries a different story.

Mine is simple: I believed that all my postponed dreams had slipped through my fingers.

My name is Rawan Marwan Shaat, and during those months I felt as though I had lost myself. My dreams were pushed aside as survival became the only immediate concern. In truth, survival itself was never fully in our hands. There was no choice but luck—or perhaps fate.

My mind was consumed with questions instead.

Why did all of this happen?
Why now, just as I had begun to accept a new and unexpected direction in my life?
Why did everything collapse so suddenly?

Even surrender was not something I chose. It was imposed upon me.

In the early months of the war, I lived among people who had become my friends during displacement. We stayed together in what we believed was a relatively safer house. Eventually, we were forced to flee as bombardment intensified and residents were ordered to evacuate.

We scattered.

I was displaced eight times. Each time the same scenes repeated themselves: shelling, death, displacement, hunger. I lived through the very scenario I had feared most during the first week of the war—losing my home and living in a tent that showed no mercy, neither in the suffocating heat of summer nor in the bitter cold of winter.

Rawan Shaat’s corner in the tent she now calls home.

War interrupted

At first, these were simply attempts to survive.

But after some time, I became painfully aware that time itself was slipping away. My life felt as though it were being consumed without purpose. I feared the war might never end, and that I would disappear inside it.

I knew I had to try to reclaim some fragment of myself.

During the war, diseases spread across Gaza, while many patients with genetic illnesses—such as cancer—died because treatment was unavailable and travel for medical care was impossible, while border crossings remained closed. Watching this unfold revived an old dream within me.

Before the war, I had once imagined becoming a researcher in science and medicine. Life’s changing currents had gradually pushed me toward artificial intelligence, but my fascination with genetic engineering had never truly disappeared. That field, however, was impossible to study in Gaza because of the siege and the severe shortage of equipment and resources.

When my desire to search again for the life I wanted returned, I decided to pursue science once more.

I began applying for scholarships.

At first, rejection was all I encountered. I accepted it quietly, knowing I was still inexperienced and had no one to guide me through the process. My applications carried very little hope—pessimism had become my default outlook after months of war and trauma.

During this time, some universities began offering online study programmes.

I refused.

I could not accept that my bachelor’s journey would exist only through a screen. How could I extinguish the passion for a university experience I had not even had the chance to live? My family and many others urged me not to waste my life waiting for what they called “illusory dreams.”

But for me, this was not a matter of fantasy.

It felt like life or death.

Holding on

Refusing an online degree did not mean I stopped learning.

Throughout this time, I continued taking online courses in artificial intelligence, programming, and design. I worked to strengthen my technological background so that one day I could combine it with scientific research.

Eventually, not all the doors remained closed.

I received an unconditional offer from the University of Glasgow in the United Kingdom to study Cellular and Molecular Biology with Biotechnology, along with a partial scholarship. I also received conditional offers from the University of Bristol and the University of Manchester, each with partial scholarships.

Yet the war in Gaza has created another obstacle.

Because of the devastating economic conditions here, I cannot cover the remaining tuition and living costs. What should have been the beginning of a new chapter has instead become another struggle: searching for organisations, scholarships, or individuals willing to help students like me continue our education.

Despite everything, I keep trying.

Whenever circumstances allow, I go to a small workspace created for students and remote workers. There, electricity and internet sometimes exist, if luck is on our side and the sky is clear. Electricity now often depends on solar panels.

Working from a small workspace for students and remote workers, where electricity and internet are sometimes available.

Every day, I search for new opportunities that might help me escape this senseless chaos.

I write about this unfinished journey to remind myself—and perhaps others—that reality is not always kind, and that we are not always responsible for the paths our lives take.

I do not accept this bitter reality. I also do not know whether clinging to my desire to grow amid ruins is the right choice.

But a dear friend once told me something I still hold onto: that my refusal to accept this reality might one day be what saves me.

So I choose to believe him.

Our attempts to hold on to the dreams of the past are not illusions, as some say. They are a lifeline, reminding us of who we are beyond the boundaries of suffering.