Shaban, an academic who fled Gaza days after Israel launched its war on the territory in October 2023, said he has an obligation to students in the Gaza Strip desperate to study in defiance of unimaginable odds.

He also said he has a responsibility to help preserve higher education in Gaza, while the world is focused on the humanitarian emergency sparked by Israel's brutal assault on the Palestinian strip.

But the 50-year-old conceded that guilt also weighs on him.

"Guilty for leaving Gaza," he told AFP. "Like we just abandoned our country, our people, our institution."

Shaban is still the dean of the Faculty of Agriculture and Veterinary Medicine at Al-Azhar University, which was destroyed -- along with most university buildings -- by Israeli air strikes.

Shaban crossed to Egypt shortly after the war began, anticipating Israel's response to the Hamas offensive would be "massive," he said.

Canadian contacts arranged a posting at Toronto's York University, where he is a visiting professor in the Faculty of Environmental and Urban Change.

In a campus office with empty book shelves and mostly bare walls, Shaban explained that he felt compelled to help make Al-Azhar operational in some form.

He wanted "to give the very clear message for the whole world: Yes, they just destroyed our infrastructure. Yes, they destroyed our buildings... but we are still alive and we will just continue," he said, referring to Israel's 14-month carpet bombing of Gaza.

"This is actually a responsibility for our students, for our nation, and for our independent state in the future."

Hunger to study
 

Shaban, who is on Al-Azhar's board, said its pre-war enrolment was 14,000 students.

When registration for online courses opened earlier this year, he expected 1,000 students to join.

"We got 10,000," he said.

"It was really, for me, shocking because, just imagine: you live in a tent, you have no electricity, you have no internet. You have nothing at all.

"But you still have the hope to go to sign up for online courses and to walk for five (kilometres) to get internet connection and even to communicate, to sit and study. And sometimes you risk your life even while you are searching for internet."

Shaban conceded his personal schedule is "stressful," as he tries to work in two time zones.

One day last month, he was up at 3:00 am to join a workshop on Gaza's food system, before an Al-Azhar board meeting at 6:00 am. He then headed to his Toronto office to prepare a guest lecture on the Israeli war on Gaza.

On evenings and weekends he records and uploads lectures for his Palestinian students.

Shaban said the study program is flexible, given the challenges of internet access. Students watch lectures and complete assignments when they can get online.

Star student killed
 

He said students in Gaza can be "angry" and "pushy": they want to know, for example, when they will able to do lab work, even though all the labs have been destroyed.

Shaban said he understands their frustrations.

"Sometimes you feel the students are looking at us like we can do things that actually are not doable," he said. "I have to be responsive in a gentle way."

As agitated student messages pour in, Shaban said he reminds himself that he is living comfortably in a city with electricity and grocery stores stocked with food.

"(I) try just to provide them with whatever support that I can. There are many things that I cannot do," he said.

Students who have died are always front of mind.

He recalled five engineering students killed as they gathered by an internet source to work on an assignment.

Shaban said he will never forget his "star student" Bilal al Aish, who, days before the war started, was trying to decide whether to pursue a scholarship in Germany or the American Fulbright.

"I saw the hope in his eyes, not only for his own future, but also the future of our institutions."

Shaban said Aish was killed by an Israeli strike early in the war.

"I got the feeling they are killing the future," the professor said. "That was really painful for me."

Israel's war on Gaza has killed at least 44,580 people, mostly women and children, according to figures from the Palestinian health ministry.

The health ministry adds that more than 105,739 others have been wounded in Israel's 14-month assault on the territory.

Israel has destroyed hundreds of schools and tens of universities and higher education institutes during the war, leaving hundreds of thousands of students without access to education in the strip for over a year.

*This story was edited by Ahram Online.