An-Najah National University: When Construction Becomes a Stance

By: Raed Al-Dubai - Lecturer in the Department of Political Science / An-Najah National University

In our country, where words have been consumed to the point that some have lost their meaning, and where it has become easy to create heroism in speech, and to sell people illusions dressed in grand slogans, silent work becomes a stance, and building itself becomes a national act.

There is a vast difference between those who invest in the emotion of the moment, and those who invest in the future of the people, between those who give the public what they want to hear, and those who give the nation what it needs to strengthen the resilience and survival of its children, and between those who are preoccupied with their image in the eyes of the people, and those who are concerned with the shape of the country twenty years, thirty, or perhaps a hundred years from today.

The experience of An-Najah National University, whose modern building was established by Professor Dr. Rami Hamdallah, deserves to be read away from the noise of daily politics, and from a perspective that may be more just. What remains of the official after the positions end? Positions, no matter how high, are transient, while institutions remain. There is a significant difference between someone who passes through the institution and adds it to their biography, and someone who passes through it and adds something to its biography, develops it, transforms it into a platform for knowledge, a monument for development, and a high banner that is pointed to with the finger.

An-Najah National University is perhaps one of the most prominent testimonies to this idea. In years when Palestine was living under the weight of invasions, siege, and uncertainty, it was easy for survival itself to become an excuse to postpone grand dreams. However, strategic thinking sometimes begins with refusing to succumb to the logic of the moment, because those who build for the future do not only ask what the circumstances allow today, but rather what their children will need tomorrow.

At a time when Palestinian geography was tightening with barriers at the beginning of this century during the Al-Aqsa Intifada, the university was expanding, and the buildings, laboratories, and colleges were growing, as if to say that the land intended to constrict its people can expand with knowledge and education. While the occupation's tanks were storming the old city of Nablus to destroy history, Dr. Rami Hamdallah's decision to build a monument for the future represented by the new university campus "the Academy" was made.

The construction and development of the university was not just an architectural expansion, but a long-term investment in the Palestinian person. The university that grants a young person knowledge, opportunity, and perspective gives them an additional reason to believe that their future can be made here, and that Palestine is a homeland worth building for those who come after us.

From the university, the idea extended to health, as knowledge alone is not enough to build a resilient society, just as a person cannot feel the meaning of homeland if they are forced, in their weakest moments, to seek their right to treatment outside.

From here, the experience of the An-Najah National University Hospital can be read as part of the same idea led by the same person, Dr. Rami Hamdallah, which is the localization of Palestinian capability, and the insistence that what a Palestinian doctor can learn and provide abroad, they can also offer to their people on their own land.

When investment is made in cancer treatment, kidney diseases, complex surgeries, and specialized fields, the matter goes beyond adding a new medical service. Behind every service being localized is a patient who would have had to travel, a family that would live with the anxiety of permits, barriers, and waiting, and a Palestinian doctor who finds a wider space to practice their knowledge in their homeland.

With the work on completing a specialized hospital for children and childbirth, the idea expands further, as it is not just about adding a building to the scene, but about building a new Palestinian capacity, and the right of the Palestinian child to start his life within a healthcare system that befits him, and the right of the mother to find the care she needs in her homeland.

These projects say something deeper than their numbers, areas, and costs. They say that the real investment in Palestine is the investment in people, and that steadfastness is not just an abstract political term, but a university where a young person learns, a hospital where a patient finds his treatment, and an opportunity given to a Palestinian mind to stay and innovate here.

However, building the homeland is not complete with a university that creates knowledge and a hospital that protects life; the state we want also needs an institution that safeguards people's right to choose.

From here comes Dr. Rami Hamdallah's experience in leading the Palestinian Central Elections Commission as another extension of the idea of the institution. Elections in Palestine are not a simple technical process, nor is it a day when the boxes are opened in the morning and closed in the evening. They take place under occupation, in a geography torn by barriers and restrictions, in a society burdened by political divisions that have weighed down its memory and weakened its trust in the political process due to years of absence of democratic entitlements. In such a reality, the integrity, transparency, and independence of the institution become a national necessity, because the citizen cannot trust his voice if he does not first trust the institution that protects that voice.

When Hamdallah assumed the presidency of the Central Elections Commission in 2024, he returned to an institution he has known the details of for years, after previously holding the position of its Secretary-General. In his leadership of the commission, he emphasized the importance of establishing its image as a professional institution that stands at a legal distance from competitors, and opens the electoral process to oversight, media, and list agents, based on a simple fact: transparency is not declared, but practiced.

The local elections of 2026 represented a real test of this institutional capability, especially in Deir al-Balah, amidst the reality of Gaza burdened by war, destruction, displacement, and the absence of many elements of normal life.

There, the question was not how to implement procedures under ideal conditions, as ideal conditions did not exist at all; the question was: how do we protect people's right to participate with what is available? When it became impossible to provide some necessities in the usual way, alternatives were sought locally, ballot boxes were made from available materials within the sector, ballots were printed there, and procedures were adapted to the reality of power outages and exceptional circumstances.

These may seem like small details in an electoral report, but they encapsulate a complete philosophy of management: a serious institution does not use difficult circumstances as an excuse for incapacity, but rather seeks, within the limits of the law and what is possible, a way to accomplish the task.

Here, the three experiences converge, despite their differing fields; the university builds the mind, the hospital preserves life, and the electoral commission protects the human right to choose. These are not institutions similar in their functions, but they converge in a meaning greater than all of them: building the state before the state is complete.

The state does not begin the day we raise a flag over a building, nor is it completed by an anthem or an official seal. The state begins much earlier, when we build a university capable of producing knowledge, a hospital capable of protecting people's lives, an administration that respects the citizen, and an electoral institution that safeguards their will.

The state begins when the law becomes stronger than mood, and the institution remains longer than the official, and public service is truly for the human being, not a favor upon him. Therefore, the true biography of any official should not be read through a list of positions they have held. The position begins and ends, and the chair that one person sits on today will be occupied by another tomorrow. The more just question is: what did they leave behind? Did the institution become stronger? Did they open a door that was not there? Did they give a young person an opportunity? Did they establish a service that Palestinians had to travel for? Did they build something that others can continue on? And did they leave the institution with enough strength to continue after them.

Here, in my opinion, we should measure the experience of men in public work. We have lived long in a region that excels at producing speakers, and perhaps it is time to restore value to builders. The homeland needs not only those who can eloquently describe its pains but also those who can alleviate one of them. It needs not only those who talk to its children about the future but also those who lay a stone today in the foundation of that future.

In Palestine, this meaning takes on a deeper dimension. We are not only fighting a battle on the land but also for our ability to live on it with dignity; to learn on it, to receive treatment on it, to choose on it, and to give our children a reason to stay on it.

Therefore, every university we build, every hospital we open, every medical service we establish, every student whose right to education we protect, and every ballot box whose integrity we safeguard is not just an administrative achievement but another stone in a large house that we have been trying for a long time to give a name worthy of all these sacrifices: Palestine.

In an age where selling illusions is easy, the truth remains more stubborn and longer-lived. For words, no matter how high they rise, calm down, and applause, no matter how long it lasts, ends, and positions, no matter how great they seem, become one day part of the past; however, the university remains teaching, the hospital remains treating, and the institution remains serving the people.

Perhaps the most beautiful thing a person can leave in their homeland is not their name on a wall, but a wall that has a roof to protect people, and a door that opens for their children, and an institution that can continue the path after them.