Deir el-Balah, Gaza Strip – This week has been possibly the most important of 18-year-old Dana Shabat’s life: her high school graduation exams.

Dana is an exceptional student – her average grade has never fallen below 99 percent – but she’s still nervous.

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The exams, in Dana’s eyes, will be decisive in mapping out her future. She’s not sure about what to study at university – torn between medicine, finance, and business administration – but she’s hoping to do well enough to secure a scholarship abroad and build a future far from the hardship she has endured in Gaza.

Dana has already lived through more than two and a half years of Israel’s genocidal war on Gaza. She survived an Israeli strike in May last year, but her mother, Lina, was killed in the attack – one of more than 73,000 Palestinians to have been killed since October 2023.

She grew up in Beit Hanoon, in northern Gaza, but that area has largely been razed by Israeli forces, and she now lives displaced with her surviving family in a tent in central Gaza’s Deir el-Balah.

With many of Gaza’s schools destroyed by Israeli attacks, or used as shelters by the displaced, Dana has been forced to continue her education remotely. The exams – known as the tawjihi – are no different.

This week may be crucial, but Dana is going to spend it waking up each day before dawn, walking for an hour, and finding a spot in one of the few cafes she can trust to have a good enough internet connection for her to take the exams online.

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“I never imagined that the most decisive stage of my life would look like this,” Dana tells Al Jazeera, as she starts her walk with her father, Muhanna. “Losing three years of education wasn’t enough. I had to teach myself every subject, and now even taking the exams has become another source of anxiety and stress.”

Exam time

Dana is one of 37,000 Palestinian students taking the tawjihi exams. It’s the first time since the war started that the exams have been held in coordination with Palestinian authorities in the West Bank.

In the West Bank, however, unlike in Gaza, students are taking the exams in schools and examination halls. Students in Gaza are all taking the tests online.

Dana is sitting for her physics exam today. It’s not a subject she finds easy.

“It requires intense concentration, but I studied it entirely on my own with the help of a few private tutoring sessions and YouTube videos,” the schoolgirl says.

Even with her early start, Dana arrives at the cafe to find that dozens of other students are already there.

At 9am, the official exam time, students quietly settle into closely spaced tables and unlock their phones, on which they will take the exam, waiting for the online examination portal to open.

Each student checks the strength of their internet connection, while Dana’s father confirms with the cafe owner that the electricity is functioning properly.

He then goes to wait outside with the other parents.

“I’ve dedicated every financial resource I have to helping Dana get through this crucial year,” Muhanna, who worked as a chemistry teacher before the war, says. “Despite our difficult circumstances, I sacrificed other household needs so that I could pay for private tutors to explain the subjects she struggled with.”

But Muhanna has now done as much as he can, and Dana’s educational success is in her own hands. It’s in these moments that he thinks of their past life, before the war.

“Our life was wonderful,” he remembers. “We had a beautiful home, stability, and my wife and I made sure our daughters had everything they needed.”

“Now, all of that has vanished,” he continues. “We live in tents with almost no basic necessities, and students are going through one of the most sensitive stages of their lives under conditions that no human being should have to endure.”

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Muhanna explains that Dana, along with her elder sister Hala – a first-year medical student, now helps to take care of their three younger sisters – Rama, Sarah, and Alma – in the absence of their mother. Alma, only three years old, lost her right eye in the attack that killed Lina.

“Their mother was highly educated and deeply believed in the value of learning,” Muhanna says, his voice breaking. “My daughters barely knew how to cook because their mother wanted them to devote all their energy to their education.”

“If she were here today, she would be devastated to see what has become of her daughters’ lives.”

Dreams

Two hours after she went into the cafe, Dana walked out.

“How was the exam? Was it difficult?” her father asks immediately.

“Everything went well. The questions were fair,” Dana replies.

“The internet was good this time, too. Thankfully, the connection didn’t drop, like it did during my previous exam,” she adds, before saying goodbye to her friends and beginning the long walk back to the family’s tent.

There she is greeted by her sisters, eager to hear how the exam went. Neighbours and relatives living in the camp also stop by to ask about her progress.

But before she can rest, Dana sends both her phone and her father’s phone to a charging station to prepare for the next exam.

The lack of electricity is a major challenge, but Dana – like hundreds of thousands of others in Gaza – has had to adjust.

Her present is full of difficulties. Eight months after the ceasefire with Israel, reconstruction still appears far away, and Israeli attacks continue periodically. Dana has no idea when she’ll be able to return to Beit Hanoon – if ever. And she doesn’t know for how much longer she’ll have to live in a tent.

But she still dreams of the future. She explains she wants to be a community leader, someone who makes an impact. She wants to learn languages and excel in whatever she chooses to do.

And ultimately, she wants to be safe and make her mother proud.

“I hope our suffering in these tents finally comes to an end,” Dana says, “and that I become the successful person my mother always wanted me to be.”