Just days before her final secondary school examinations, the house opposite the temporary home where 18-year-old Saba Rabah was living in central Gaza was bombed.
She and her family fled, leaving behind everything they had.
It was only the latest ordeal in a war that had already claimed her father’s life, destroyed their family’s home and forced them into repeated displacement.
Yet against overwhelming odds, Rabah emerged as the top-ranked student in the science stream of the Palestinian national high school exams, known as Tawjihi – the first to be held in the territory since the war erupted in October 2023.
“I achieved a score of 99.9 per cent, ranking first in the nation in the science stream,” Rabah told reporters, dressed in her graduation gown as relatives and neighbours gathered to celebrate in Al-Maghazi refugee camp in central Gaza.
The Tawjihi examinations were held in June simultaneously in Gaza, the Israeli-occupied West Bank, Egypt and several other countries with Palestinian communities for the first time in three years.
Since the war erupted in October 2023, the vast majority of Gaza’s school and educational buildings have been damaged or destroyed by air strikes or shelling, leaving tens of thousands of children without access to formal education.
As homes and neighbourhoods were destroyed, many surviving school buildings were transformed into overcrowded shelters for hundreds of thousands of displaced families.
Around 89,000 students sat the secondary school examinations this year, including more than 25,000 in the science stream, where Rabah secured the highest score.
She dedicated her achievement to her late father, Fayed Rabah, as well as to her mother, siblings and teachers.
As soon as the results were announced, her family erupted in celebration. Young men danced to the beat of drums as neighbours clapped and cheered.
Rabah embraced relatives, posed for photographs and accepted bouquets of flowers beneath a portrait of her father hanging on the wall – a poignant reminder of the loss behind the celebration.
Her path to success was eked out through two years of war. “My father was a teacher at UNRWA schools,” Rabah said, referring to the UN agency for Palestinian refugees.
She said he was killed in an Israeli air strike in June 2024.
Even before his death, the family had already been displaced twice after Israeli forces entered Al-Maghazi camp, while their home was demolished in January 2024.
After her father’s death, the family was forced to flee repeatedly.
“We were displaced so many times that I can no longer remember the exact number,” Rabah said. “There was so much displacement and fear … our house was destroyed. I lost half of my books, but I never gave up on my goals.”
Even during the examination period, danger remained close. “We lost our home a few days before the exams because the house across from us was bombed,” she said.
Power cuts and internet outages made studying even more difficult. At times, she travelled to another area to attend private lessons and sit her examinations, “not knowing what might happen on the way”.
“My ambition is to enter medical school … the dream that my father had for me,” she said. “My greatest hope is that all my hard work will be recognised and that I will receive a full scholarship to study medicine.”
Her mother, Feryal Ahmed Rabah, 52, said the family’s joy had come after months of grief and hardship.
She recalled how her daughter often studied by the light of a mobile phone flashlight. “The joy is indescribable. I expected her to be among the top students, but she became the top student in all of Palestine, and that feeling cannot be put into words,” she said.
“God blessed us by bringing joy back into our hearts through her outstanding achievement, despite the difficult circumstances, her father’s death, and our repeated displacement because of the war.”
