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More than 130 Gazan students are pleading with Canada to grant visas so they can attend universities that have already offered them full scholarships. Some visa applications have been pending for more than 18 months without progress. Two students have already lost their lives during the wait; others remain at risk.
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Ottawa blames the visa delays on the complexity of the cases, which necessitate security and biometrics checks, and difficulty evacuating the students from Gaza.
When the war interrupted Sondos’s studies in Gaza, she began looking for opportunities to study abroad. But it was difficult to find a stable internet connection to complete her application to the University of Waterloo in Canada. She had to walk several kilometres before finding a spot on a sandy street in Gaza City where the Wi-Fi was strong enough.
On the day she submitted it, she was about to leave the street when an Israeli strike hit a group of people using the internet there.
“I started running and fell to the ground; shrapnel and blood were everywhere,” Sondos recalled. She was unable to speak for days after witnessing the horror.
Sondos received the news that she had been accepted into the university‘s global governance master’s programme on November 26 of last year.
“I was overjoyed,” she said. “I felt as if the war had laid down its arms for my sake, to let me celebrate for a few minutes, and that the sky – lit up by explosions and rockets – was sending another kind of light, one that illuminated my heart, which had grown hopeless from the hell we were living.”
Sondos dreams of becoming a human rights lawyer and representing the Palestinian people on the world stage. After her university was destroyed in the war, the prospect of studying abroad gave her a rare glimmer of hope.
“I want to be a hand that offers help to the world, and that contributes to spreading justice and human rights for many people, including my own,” she said.
But like some 130 other Gazan students who have received scholarships to Canada, she is still waiting for a visa – and still trapped in Gaza.
Many students have sought help from the Canadian non-profit Palestinian Students and Scholars at Risk. But for some, the wait proved fatal. Gazan twins Dalia and Sally, who had also been accepted to the University of Waterloo, were killed in an Israeli air strike on December 5, 2024, the university confirmed.
Professor Nadia Abu-Zahra has been advocating for the students in Ottawa. She has spoken with Sondos, exchanging voice notes with words of encouragement. She says the students’ resilience in the face of relentless bombardment and the destruction of every university in Gaza demonstrates their determination to survive – and to pursue their education despite everything.
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Canadian authorities have said the need for biometrics and background checks, and the difficulties of evacuating students from Gaza, are behind the delays. But Abu-Zahra says these are just excuses.
“Other countries have already resolved these administrative obstacles to expedite assistance for students, making Canada’s position increasingly difficult to justify.”
“They’re not even asking for refugee status,” she says. “The refusal to let them in as students, as scholars, is baffling.”
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Meanwhile, videos from Sondos show her teaching children in a tent as drones buzz overhead – another symbol, Abu-Zahra says, of the determination to keep learning.
“I think how courageous those teachers, how courageous those parents and those children are – that they want to learn, despite every effort to stop them. They’re unstoppable,” Abu-Zahra said as she watched a video Sondos sent on her iPhone.
Other countries, including the UK, Italy, Ireland and France, have managed to evacuate Gazan students so they can continue their studies abroad. Sondos and her peers are waiting for Canada to do the same.
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