The Plight of the Palestinian Scientist

Four Palestinian researchers describe how conflict in Gaza and the West Bank has hindered their careers in science and medicine.

Pursuing a scientific career in the Palestinian territories has been fraught for decades. Then Hamas attacked Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, igniting a war in the Gaza Strip that has lasted for more than a year.

As Israel has bombed and invaded Gaza in a campaign to eliminate Hamas, schools have been destroyed and students have had to continue their studies remotely or stop them altogether. Physicians have worked in ever-worsening conditions. And Palestinians outside the territory, too, have felt the effects.

The New York Times spoke to four Palestinians living in Gaza, the West Bank and abroad about the conflict that looms over their scientific research and medical work.

Wafaa Khater grew up in the West Bank, an area west of the Jordan River that has been occupied by Israel since 1967. She moved to Norway to pursue her Ph.D. in physics at the University of Bergen.

She had the opportunity to stay in Norway permanently, but moved back to the West Bank to teach in the early 2000s, during the Palestinians’ second uprising against the Israeli occupation. “All my Norwegian colleagues at the time told me, ‘Are you crazy?’” she recalled. “But I told them, ‘It’s home, and I am on a mission.’”