The emails from British universities sit on devices that rarely stay charged for long — scholarships from Oxford and Cambridge, Durham and Glasgow, among others. For now, that is where the offers remain — stored in digital inboxes.

It's a cruel irony. Against impossible odds, dozens of Palestinian students in Gaza won scholarships. And yet, after all their hard work, the offers are as good as duds on the brink of expiring.

The obstacle: these students are unable to send the biometric data required for visas.

The reason: Gaza's only processing centre has been shut since October 2023.

With the Rafah crossing — their only route to a neighbouring country for fingerprinting and photos — closed since May 2024, the students are stuck.

UK colleges expect the information before the new semester begins in early September. But as August draws to an end, the Palestinian students of Gaza sit idle, waiting and hoping for something to work out.

This setback comes as Palestinian education system in Gaza itself lies in ruins. The UN has warned that the territory is facing near-total educational devastation, as the Israeli forces have damaged or destroyed more than 90 percent of schools and universities since the war began. The UN agency for Palestinian refugees (UNRWA) reported that 88 percent schools now require major reconstruction, calling education in Gaza "a casualty of war".

Yet even amid this collapse, students managed to excel — carrying full scholarships such as the Chevening awards and Higher Education Scholarship Palestine (HESPAL), or raising funds, passing interviews and clearing every academic hurdle.

Their scholarships now hang on a single requirement they cannot physically complete.

Faced with an uncertain future, the Palestinian students in Gaza are now appealing to the UK to follow through on its promise to defer biometrics when necessary — and to help them exit Gaza safely to finish the process abroad.

"It is really so frustrating that I may lose my scholarship... just because the biometric data cannot be deferred for just a day," says Majed, a doctor who won acceptance to a master's in Immunology and Inflammatory Disease.

"Please see us as humans... email your MPs, contact the universities, push and press the government."

Europe beckons, war interrupts

In May, several students — including nine Chevening recipients — wrote directly to the British Foreign Secretary, pleading for urgent assistance to reach the UK in time for the start of the academic year.

More than 100 MPs, university leaders and civil society groups joined their call. Campaigners estimate that at least 76 students in Gaza hold offers from 31 UK universities.

Activists with Gaza40, a coalition launched by Palestinian and UK students on August 2, say nine students with full scholarships have been told the UK government is working to evacuate them, a small breakthrough after months of campaigning.

The Guardian confirmed this last week, reporting that nine Gaza students with full scholarships to British universities have been contacted by the UK government regarding their evacuation from the Palestinian enclave destroyed in Israeli bombings. 

But all of them are Chevening scholars — recipients of the Foreign Office-funded award. While they welcomed the update, dozens of other Palestinians in Gaza with offers and scholarships from various UK universities remain in limbo.

And as days pass, many others still wait, their visas stalled by a system they cannot access and a war they cannot escape.

The UK introduced a biometrics deferral process in 2023, which — in theory — allows applicants in Gaza to enrol their data later or from abroad.

Students say their requests go unanswered or come too late. Even when a deferral lands, no safe route exists to reach a third country.

Unlike the UK, a few other countries, including Italy, Ireland and France, have already evacuated Palestinian students who had secured scholarships and admissions to the universities. 

In Gaza, the process becomes an obstacle, and an appointment becomes a border. Explains Lynn, another Palestinian student based in Gaza: "Delays in biometric verification risk denying us a future that we fought for... under unbearable circumstances."

Waiting, hoping, keeping faith 

For Lynn, the wait tests more than patience: it tests a philosophy she chose long before the bombardment began.

"What kept me motivated was my belief that education is one of the few things that cannot be taken from me," she says, speaking exclusively to TRT World from Gaza.

"Even under bombardment, displacement and blockade, learning is something that I can hold on to, and it's my opportunity to create the change I want to see."

But even hope, Lynn admits, can feel like labour.

"Sometimes hope feels heavy because it's the only thing that we can hold on to at times of despair," she says. "Hope is not just a feeling, it's like an act of resistance, an act of resilience, a decision that I'll keep going even when things are hard."

One image anchors her resolve: children in a camp tying plastic bags into a makeshift football, kicking it barefoot through sand, laughing as ruins loom behind them.

"Resilience is beautiful," she says, "but it shouldn't be demanded of us forever".

In another part of Gaza, Majed's days blur into triage and grief.

"I'm really tired of confirming deaths and the time of death," he tells TRT World. "Without hope, we're really dead people... and without hope, there is nothing much left."

So, Majed goes to check on those who need his care, and he does it for those he loved and lost. "By just taking another breath, just by being alive, I'm carrying their own wills and their stories and their ambitions," he says.

Like Lynn and Majed, also waiting for a passage to the UK is Manar. And like them, Manar refuses to see herself only as a victim.

"I'm a witness, a survivor, with the responsibility to document, to teach and to amplify the voices of my people and community," she says. "Hope is not a feeling... hope is a decision."

Passage to a brighter future

Lynn plans to study Defence, Development and Diplomacy at Durham University, a choice shaped by what she calls a humanitarian system that "has failed us" and does not meet what "the Gazan community truly needs".

"I need the education, the tools, the perspective, the global perspective," she says, "in order to help build a better humanitarian system, one that actually protects women, girls and all of my people".

Mohammed, another student, who earned a place at the University of Glasgow to study Epidemiology of Infectious Diseases and Antimicrobial Resistance with a Chevening scholarship, frames his choice bluntly.

"Education is my lifeline, a way to fight back... even when life in Gaza feels impossible," he tells TRT World, speaking from the enclave.

His plans: design stronger disease surveillance, build evidence-based interventions and partner with international bodies to shore up a health system under siege. "We need to build systems that catch outbreaks before they overwhelm clinics with no medicine left," says Mohammed.

Manar, an applied linguist with an offer from a UK college, describes each line of her UK application as a small act of defiance.

"Honestly, it was not easy to focus and hope when everything around me was collapsing," she says. "Every page when writing my application was an act of resistance... I would not let darkness enter my life or define my future."

Manar's research crosses arts, culture, languages and media. She says she wants to document culture and heritage, and "apply the recommendation and the results... into practical programmes and projects that aim to empower and heal the Palestinian people".

"I want to save the Palestinian identity," she says.

Majed carries that weight of obstacles on a daily basis, and it's killing him.

"What I'm trying to do is to break the chain of suffering and misery," he says. "The only way we can resist this suffering is education."

He sought a master's in immunology and inflammatory diseases precisely because he was driven by what he had treated and feared: outbreaks of Hepatitis A, acute gastroenteritis, cases of Guillain-Barre and acute flaccid paralysis, infections that shrug off the few antibiotics left in the enclave. 

Majed vows to return with tools to manage the infections he confronts every day.

Now he asks for something modest and urgent — an extension.

Looking to the UK government

Without allowing them deferrals, as Lynn explains, the "administrative barriers" threaten to deny them the future they "fought for under unbearable circumstances".

But she – like Majed and Manar – believes the key to removing the immediate barrier lies with the UK government.

Lynn insists that this is feasible. "We know that the UK government values education," she says. "What we are simply asking for is an opportunity to learn."

The students stress they are not seeking special treatment — only the chance to complete what they have already earned.

"We all know that deferring the biometric data and providing the students a safe passage out of Gaza is possible," Lynn says. "We've seen other countries like Italy, Germany and France doing so."

While Mohammed, being a Chevening award holder, recently received communication from the UK government for possible evacuation, others wait for their turn.

On his part, Majed praises the universities for standing by the cohort, and says policymakers have to follow suit.

"We need the UK government to act with the same urgency," he says. "That collective effort is hope in action," he adds, insisting that hope "is not just a feeling, it is something you practice... choosing to keep going when [the] situation feels impossible".

One scene haunts him: a boy in a shelter, coughing hard with no doctor or medicine, clutching schoolbooks and talking about becoming a doctor himself.

"Healthcare and education are both under attack," Mohammed says, "and rebuilding one means rebuilding the other".

Manar echoes this belief. The current hold-up, she says, is not "a delay in paperwork", but "a delay in preserving academic freedom", a delay "in saving our lives".

Manar still measures time by two dates.

"A moment that I will never forget is the destruction of my home on my birthday," she says. "Home is your soul... just erased in a moment."

One year later, on the same date, she received a scholarship offer. "It's like a beacon of light in the middle of this darkness."

Gaza – an 'open-air prison'

It is this beacon that could very well get extinguished if these students are not accommodated. 

Manar now urges people in Britain, especially students, to move beyond sympathy.

"Speak up, stand with us," she appeals. "This fellowship is not a degree, it's a type of bridge between life defined by war and life defined by purpose."

Like her, Majed asks people to imagine spending two years seeking a place, finally being promised funding, "and then you're not allowed because there are some papers... which just don't make any sense".

To him, Gaza is an "open-air prison", one that keeps "getting narrower and tighter".

For all four, hope and study braid together. Each says the same thing in a different way: let us in, so we can return to Gaza better equipped to help our people.

Lynn dreams of a lecture hall where she can "focus on my studies and learn something that I'll bring back to my community".

Manar wants to "document the struggle of the displaced communities", not as an outsider but as a scholar who lived through it.

"Sometimes I ask myself, why am I surviving?" Lynn says, then answers her own question. "My place in this world, I believe, is to bear witness and to work hard to make sure that people won't go through what we've been... enduring."

She knows the cost of waiting. She also knows the cost of surrender.

The students say they will keep writing emails when the network flickers back, that they will keep revising personal statements by candlelight, and they will keep pressing for deferrals that a war turned from routine to unreachable.

On paper, this is a small administrative task. But in Gaza, it has become the wall between a life "defined by war", as Manar puts it, and a life "defined by purpose".

*Only first names are used at the request of the students.

Mahmoud Abu Hamda contributed to this report from Gaza.