The University of Limerick welcomes a group of Palestinian students who have been evacuated from Gaza to pursue their Masters and Bachelors degrees for the 2025/2026 academic year.
After months of waiting under the Israeli siege on Gaza, the Irish embassy in Palestine managed to coordinate for the full scholarship recipients to get out of Gaza.
The students were subjected to numerous obstacles, waiting stations, stops, and inspections. They were not allowed to take necessities like clothes, food, or water.
Their journey lasted 72 hours and took them through Israel, Jordan, and Turkey before they finally arrived at Dublin Airport. Upon arrival, they underwent a series of medical examinations, including COVID-19 tests, malnutrition assessments, and various blood tests.
After spending a full night at a medical complex in Dublin, they were embraced by the university staff, who accompanied them to their student accommodation.
When 21-year-old Mohammed Heriz stepped onto the University of Limerick campus, he stopped to take in the trees, “Everything is green,” he said, eyes wide with disbelief.
“It’s like the movies. Back home, if you walked from my house to the sea, you’d only see damaged buildings, rubble, and garbage because of the genocide. Here—it’s all life.”
For Heriz, the journey to Limerick began long before the war. He is currently doing his BA in artificial intelligence, his passion since the age of fourteen. He had represented Palestine in an international AI competition, developing a mobile app that could detect cataracts through a simple eye scan. “The accuracy was 98%,” he recalled proudly. “It could save people from blindness for free.”
At his university in Gaza, he quickly rose to the top of his class in Artificial Intelligence and Data Science. He led a Google Developers club, trained peers, and even taught AI workshops for the Ministry of Education. “I was obsessed with learning,” he said with a small smile. “It was the only thing that made sense in Gaza.”
Then came the war. His university was destroyed, his scholarship canceled, and his family displaced to a tent in Rafah. His mother was killed in February. “I remember sitting in the tent,” he said quietly. “No money, no hope, nothing. I just stared at the sky, asking God, ‘Is this really how it ends?’”
Even then, he kept applying for scholarships to Russia, Italy, Belgium, and Malaysia. Each time, something blocked his way: bombings, border closures, or embassy delays. “I tried for two years,” he said. “When Ireland finally accepted me, I couldn’t believe it. I was one of three left behind from the first evacuation list. I thought I’d never get out.”
His evacuation was harrowing. It was on September 29 from Deir Al-Balah.
The bus carrying him to the border was caught between armed groups and Israeli military fire.
“They shot near the bus, and we did not know if we would make it out alive” Heriz Said. Then, they crossed and met the Irish members of the embassy on the other side of the crossing, with hugs, food, and drink.
“I cannot forget what they told me then,” Heriz said. “‘This is the Irish hospitality.’ They were right. Everyone here is kind. I feel like I belong.” He finally arrived in Limerick on September 31.
Now, Heriz spends his days in the university’s library, sometimes from morning until midnight. “It’s my favorite place,” he laughed. “I study, eat, nap, and study again. Every day I discover something new.”
For Heriz, Ireland is not just a place of safety — it’s a chance to rebuild what war tried to erase, “Ireland gave me this chance when no one else could. You don’t forget something like that.”
When the University of Limerick opened the BA applications program, Deema Al Banna, 21, didn’t hesitate to apply. “The University of Limerick came by chance — but it turned out to be the best choice I could’ve made.”
Originally admitted to Finance and Mathematics, Deema later switched to Technology Management, a field she says finally feels like her. “I’ve always loved management,” she says, “and I dream of creating my own brand someday.”
Al-Banna describes her arrival at the University of Limerick as “a dream after a nightmare.” Yet, the journey that brought her there was one of unimaginable exhaustion.
Deema’s evacuation came suddenly while she was attending a well-being workshop. The Irish embassy informed her that she had been approved to travel and needed to reach Deir al-Balah immediately.
With only eight hours to prepare, she rushed to buy supplies for her family and said painful goodbyes — her siblings, her friend Lara, 21, and her father, who couldn’t bear to see her leave.
On August 27, she and her sister, Tala, 22, spent a sleepless night before leaving Gaza from the departure point in Deir Al-Balah at 3 am.
“We waited hours for Israeli approval,” she says. After five hours, they were finally cleared. “That was when the real journey began, for the first time, I saw how beautiful Palestine is.”
As the bus crossed from Gaza toward Jordan, Deema couldn’t close her eyes. “I wanted to see everything — the land, the trees, the roads. For the first time, I saw how beautiful Palestine is.”
Her voice softens, “When I saw the Dead Sea, I cried. I knew it might be the first and last time I’d see my homeland.”
In Jordan, they stayed briefly at a hotel before flying to Istanbul and then Dublin. “I remember stepping into the hotel and thinking of my childhood — it reminded me of the one where my mother worked in Gaza,” she says.
But rest was brief, “Within an hour, we were rushed to the airport. We had no food, just our bags and my notebooks. One of them carried my memories from Gaza,” she says. “On the first page, I had written, ‘When will you hold a happy memory?’ When I left Gaza, I finally wrote one.”
“When I saw Ireland, I cried out of happiness,” says Al-Banna, remembering the moment her plane touched down in Dublin. “The first thing I felt was the cold.”
Coming from Gaza’s warmth, Ireland’s rain and endless green stunned her. “I had never seen so much green — the air felt clean, like breathing for the first time.”
But the relief quickly turned to ache. “That night, it hit me — my first night alone, without my parents or my sister. I kept the light on for a month because I couldn’t sleep in the dark.”
At the University of Limerick, the first days were overwhelming. “It felt like landing on another planet,” she says. “It took me weeks to make even two friends.”
Yet, over time, the campus became her refuge, “The library is my favorite place — it helps me focus and stop overthinking.” After two years away from school, she had to relearn how to study and manage her time, all in a new language.
Even now, she battles exhaustion and guilt. “My father and younger siblings are living in tents after our house was destroyed,” she says. “My little sisters can’t go to school — one’s kindergarten age and doesn’t know how to read or write. I study for them.”
Despite everything, Deema stays hopeful. Her notebook, once filled with Gaza’s memories, now holds a new chapter on her desk in Limerick. Its first line reads: “This time, the memory is happy.”