Doaa Musallem’s high school grades were so good that she got a call from the Palestinian Minister of Education calling her a hero.
But for the 18-year-old, the celebration was bittersweet.
Like some 56,000 other students from Gaza’s class of 2025, the last two years of her education have been nearly completely disrupted by Israel’s war in Gaza, which has killed almost 19,000 school age children, made orphans out of thousands of others, and all but decimated the enclave’s formal education system.
“Our happiness is incomplete because our supporter and the pillar of the house is not here,” she told CNN, speaking of her father, who was absent from the celebrations.
Doaa’s father Bassam Musallam was critically wounded by shrapnel in November 2023, when an Israeli strike hit a neighboring house and killed his friend in central Gaza, the family told CNN.
Musallam was evacuated to Egypt for medical treatment in April 2024 and has been there since, missing many milestones in his daughter’s life, including
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