Displaced Gaza Student Walks Hour Daily to Cafe for Online High School Exams

Dana Shabat, an 18-year-old student living in a tent in Deir el-Balah, walks one hour each day to a cafe to sit her high school graduation exams online. She completed her physics paper on 27 June 2026 and said the questions were fair and the internet connection remained stable. Shabat’s average grade has never fallen below 99 percent.

She prepared for the physics exam through private tutoring sessions and YouTube videos after schools in Gaza were destroyed or converted to shelters. She is one of 37,000 Palestinian students taking the tawjihi exams this week. The exams mark the first time since the war began that they have been held in coordination with Palestinian authorities in the West Bank.

Students there are using schools and examination halls, while those in Gaza are testing online. Shabat survived an Israeli strike in May 2025 that killed her mother, Lina. Her three-year-old sister Alma lost her right eye in the same attack.

The family had lived in Beit Hanoon in northern Gaza before that area was largely razed; they now share a tent in central Gaza. Shabat’s father, Muhanna, a former chemistry teacher, said he used household funds to pay for tutors. He waits outside the cafe during exams with other parents.

Shabat has an older sister, Hala, a first-year medical student, and two other younger sisters, Rama and Sarah. More than 73,000 Palestinians have been killed since October 2023, Al Jazeera reported. Eight months after a ceasefire, reconstruction in Gaza remains limited and Israeli attacks continue periodically.