After Israeli soldiers stormed Birzeit University near Ramallah to demolish a stone memorial dedicated to dead students, Rania Washaha, 47, felt the pain of bereavement again. Her brother, Fadi, 34, was shot in the head by an Israeli soldier near the northern entrance to el-Bireh in the central West Bank in May 2021. His name was among the 38 students from the university killed by Israel and listed on the stone pillar known as the Martyrs’ Monument.
Israeli soldiers raided the university campus at dawn on Monday, accompanied by 10 military vehicles. A bulldozer demolished the pillar, and soldiers took away the marble stone. In its place, the Israelis left a planter containing a fig sapling, bearing the inscription: “Water it twice.” This raid marks the fifth Israeli incursion into the campus since the beginning of 2026 and the 28th since 2002.
Birzeit University’s administration condemned the recent raid, describing the destruction of the Martyrs’ Monument as a violation of international law and an attack on education and national memory. It came 10 days after another incursion by Israeli forces during the daytime, a day before the start of the new fall semester. Nardeen al-Memi, the university’s public relations and media officer, told Al Jazeera in the brief minutes of their incursion, Israeli soldiers approached the monument for the first time and photographed it.
The Martyrs’ Monument was erected between 1994 and 1996, bearing the names of students and alumni at Birzeit killed by Israeli forces. The list starts with Sharaf al-Tayyibi, who was shot dead by Israeli forces on the campus in 1984. The names of other students and alumni were added during the years that followed.
Sami Adel, a Birzeit student who wanted to use a pseudonym due to his fear of being detained, told Al Jazeera the memorial holds a place in the heart of everyone who has attended the university since the 1990s. In recent years, Israel has tried to suppress any student activity dedicated to commemorating the martyrs, he said. The removal of the memorial is part of a broader Israeli policy targeting memorials dedicated to Palestinians killed by Israel in the occupied West Bank.
The Israeli far-right has made the issue part of its campaign to erase markers of Palestinian identity. Zvi Sukkot, a member of the Knesset from the Religious Zionism Party, destroyed one such memorial in the village of Madama, south of Nablus, with a sledgehammer in August. The Israeli military later said that it routinely removes “symbols of incitement”.
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