Germany Offered to Fund Their Education. It Won’t Help Them Leave Gaza.
Por Karim Natour — Drop Site News
This month, the winter semester begins at universities across Germany, and students will fill lecture halls as they begin their studies.
Twenty-three-year-old Ranin Al-Madhoun will not be among them. She studied German intensively and won a competitive scholarship from the German Konrad Adenauer Foundation. But she is stuck in the Sheikh Radwan neighborhood of Gaza City.
The scholarship, funded with public money, would pay her more than €1,000 a month to pursue a master’s degree in business administration at Niederrhein University of Applied Sciences in western Germany. But the German Embassy in Cairo, which handles visa applications from Gaza, requires applicants to appear in person—an impossible requirement for someone who cannot leave the Strip.
“The first thing I imagine when I think about my life in Germany is a sense of safety,” she told Drop Site in an interview. “Things like going to the gym, studying, buying groceries, having a normal daily life.”
She added: “We have had to flee six times during the war and live in a relative’s house because ours was destroyed.” On some days, her family can’t get drinking water. Gas for cooking is limited. In the mornings, she waits for the local generators to come on so she can attend her online German classes.
Al-Madhoun, who holds a bachelor’s degree from Al-Azhar University in Gaza, said she has appealed to German lawmakers, but none have been able to assist her.
She is not the only one caught between a German admission letter and the impossibility of leaving Gaza. Drop Site identified other students from Gaza either hold German scholarships or have been admitted to German university programs but cannot leave to take up their places. Their options at home are few: according to UNESCO, 22 of Gaza’s 38 university campuses have been completely destroyed, and 14 more have sustained damage as of November 2025.
A letter seen by Drop Site from uni-assist, the agency through which Al-Madhoun applied for master’s programs, advised her to apply for a visa at the German embassy “in your country.” Germany has no visa-processing mission in Gaza.
The Konrad Adenauer Foundation, which is affiliated with Chancellor Friedrich Merz’s conservative Christian Democratic Union (CDU), wrote to Al-Madhoun in July that the Federal Foreign Office could not support her departure.
“To my great regret, applications can still only be submitted in person at the German visa office in Cairo responsible for Gaza,” the letter, seen by Drop Site, states. “It therefore appears that support for your departure is not possible on the part of the Federal Foreign Office either.”
Asked for comment, the German Federal Foreign Office told Drop Site: “The Federal Government’s support for departures from Gaza is provided […] for German nationals and their close family members traveling with them. Since May 2024, the crossings out of Gaza have been closed to regular passenger departures. All departures from Gaza require the corresponding authorization from the Israeli authorities.” The Germany embassy in Cairo did not respond to requests for comment.
The Konrad Adenauer Foundation told Drop Site: “We are in regular contact with the Federal Foreign Office regarding options for leaving Gaza, and we are in touch with members of the CDU/CSU parliamentary group in the Bundestag. The scholarship commitment is valid for one year.”
By contrast, some Western countries have helped students leave Gaza through government-coordinated evacuation programs. Italy has evacuated more than 200 students through a state-run university corridor since September 2025, and Ireland around 70 since August 2025. Some of these countries are now tightening access.
By the end of August, Ireland had approved only 39 of the 142 study visa applications from Palestinians it had ruled on this year (about 27%), down from nearly 84% in 2025. The U.S. State Department suspended visa issuance in January to individuals traveling on travel documents issued or endorsed by the Palestinian Authority.
Germany has taken in almost no one from Gaza beyond its own citizens: according to the federal government, around 630 German nationals and their family members have left the Strip since October 2023, while WHO figures show Germany had accepted just one medical evacuee from Gaza by late 2025, compared with more than 200 in Italy.
In Autumn 2025, the German government rejected an offer from the city of Hanover to take in up to 20 sick and injured children from Gaza and Israel for treatment. The refusal drew criticism. It later emerged that eight donkeys had been evacuated from Gaza to Germany for medical care.
For now, Al-Madhoun’s scholarship remains valid, but only for one year. “I have received the scholarship and the admission, paid my semester fees, arranged my health insurance, and continued preparing by improving my German,” she said. “It is very difficult to accept that after coming this far and doing everything I could, I still cannot physically reach Germany.”
Fonte: Drop Site News
