Destruction of Birzeit University Memorial Highlights Efforts to Erase Palestinian Memory

Rania Washaha held her brother’s photo near the memorial in Birzeit University. 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.

“Bulldozers won’t erase the memory of the martyrs, military vehicles won’t extinguish the light of knowledge, and these assaults won’t break the university’s resolve to pursue its academic and national mission,” a statement by the university pledged.

Birzeit University students again wrote the names of martyrs that were inscribed on the memorial. 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 last name inscribed on the monument was that of student Omar al-Naasan, whom soldiers killed in al-Mughayyir east of Ramallah on September 2 while he was confronting settler incursions,” said Nardeen. “Days after his death, his father came and personally wrote his son’s name on the monument.”

University students organised a protest at the site of the destroyed memorial on Tuesday afternoon, most viewing it as an Israeli attempt to intimidate them. 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.

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.

Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich submitted a list of approximately 40 Palestinian memorials, proposing their destruction, to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. There has been a wider targeting of civic and cultural symbols across the West Bank, particularly in Jenin, by Israeli authorities.

Political analyst Mohammed al-Qeeq, who served as president of the Birzeit University Student Council between 2006 and 2007, told Al Jazeera that Israel has targeted writers, influencers, and activists, along with students, to deter any resistance to the occupation.