Israel Demolishes Birzeit University Martyrs' Monument, Escalating Campaign Against Palestinian Memory

Israeli military forces stormed Birzeit University near Ramallah before dawn on Monday, bulldozing a stone memorial that honored dozens of students and alumni killed by Israel and replacing it with a fig sapling, according to university officials and witnesses.

The raid, carried out with approximately 10 military vehicles, marks the fifth Israeli incursion onto the campus since the start of 2026 and the 28th since 2002, according to the university. Soldiers removed the marble plaque from the Martyrs' Monument and hauled it away, leaving behind a planter bearing the inscription "Water it twice."

For Rania Washaha, 47, the destruction reopened a wound that had never fully healed. 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 and alumni inscribed on the stone pillar.

"I felt the pain of bereavement again," Washaha said, holding a photograph of her brother near the site where the memorial once stood.

The Martyrs' Monument was erected between 1994 and 1996 and bore the names of Birzeit students and graduates killed by Israeli forces over nearly four decades. The first name inscribed was that of Sharaf al-Tayyibi, who was shot dead on campus in 1984. Over the years, additional names were added as more students and alumni were killed in the occupied West Bank.

The most recent addition was Omar al-Naasan, a student killed by Israeli soldiers in al-Mughayyir, east of Ramallah, on September 2 while confronting settler incursions. According to Nardeen al-Memi, the university's public relations and media officer, al-Naasan's father came to the campus days after his son's death and personally carved the name onto the monument.

The raid came just 10 days after another daytime Israeli incursion, and only a day before the start of the new fall semester. Al-Memi told Al Jazeera that during an earlier brief incursion, Israeli soldiers approached the monument for the first time and photographed it, in what she described as a prelude to its destruction.

Birzeit University's administration condemned the raid in a statement, calling the demolition of the memorial 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," the statement read.

On Tuesday afternoon, students organized a protest at the site of the destroyed memorial, with many interpreting the demolition as an attempt to intimidate them. Students later rewrote the names of the martyrs on the ground where the monument had stood.

Sami Adel, a Birzeit student who requested a pseudonym due to fear of detention, said the memorial held deep significance for generations of students. He told Al Jazeera that Israeli forces had detained him for several hours just three weeks earlier and threatened him with a long and harsh prison sentence if he participated in any political student activity on campus.

The removal of the Birzeit memorial fits a broader Israeli policy targeting monuments dedicated to Palestinians killed by Israel across the occupied West Bank. Israeli far-right figures have made the destruction of such memorials a central part of their campaign to erase markers of Palestinian identity.

In August, Zvi Sukkot, a Knesset member from the Religious Zionism Party, personally destroyed a memorial in the village of Madama, south of Nablus, using a sledgehammer. The Israeli military later stated that it routinely removes what it describes as "symbols of incitement."

Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich submitted a list of approximately 40 Palestinian memorials to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, proposing their destruction, according to the source article. The campaign has extended to a wide range of civic and cultural symbols across the West Bank, with Jenin emerging as a particular focus of Israeli operations.

In Jenin, a monument known as the "Jenin Horse," constructed from the wreckage of an Israeli incursion into the city, was removed. A memorial dedicated to Al Jazeera journalist Shireen Abu Akleh was also targeted in 2023. Additionally, a cemetery containing the bodies of Iraqi soldiers killed during the 1948 war, located in Jenin, has been raided by Israelis from illegal settlements.

The destruction of the Birzeit monument has drawn condemnation from Palestinian officials and human rights advocates who view it as part of a systematic effort to suppress Palestinian historical narrative and collective memory. The university, long regarded as a symbol of Palestinian academic and national identity, has been repeatedly targeted by Israeli forces over the past two decades.

For families like the Washahas, the demolished monument represented more than stone and marble. It was a place where grief could be acknowledged publicly, where the names of the dead were preserved against the passage of time and the pressures of occupation. Its removal, they say, amounts to a second loss.

Israeli authorities have not issued a detailed response to the specific allegations regarding the Birzeit raid, though the military has previously stated that it operates against what it terms incitement and maintains security measures in the West Bank. The international community has yet to issue a unified response to the demolition, which comes amid heightened tensions across the occupied territory.

The university has vowed to continue its academic and national mission despite the raid. Students have already begun restoring the names of the martyrs in other forms, writing them across the ground where the monument once stood. For many at Birzeit, the act of remembering has become an act of resistance itself.

As the fall semester begins, the campus community faces the challenge of preserving memory in the absence of the physical structure that once held it. The fig sapling left behind by Israeli soldiers, with its cryptic instruction to water it twice, stands in stark contrast to the stone pillar it replaced — a living plant where a memorial to the dead once stood, and a reminder that the struggle over Palestinian memory is far from over.