Despite losing her father, her family home and much of her education to the war in Gaza, 18-year-old Saba Rabah has achieved the highest score in the science stream of the Palestinian national secondary school examinations, fulfilling a dream she says belonged to her late father.
Rabah scored 99.9 percent in the Tawjihi examinations, securing the top position nationwide in the science stream. Speaking to AFP from Al-Maghazi refugee camp in central Gaza, she celebrated the achievement with family members and neighbors while dressed in her graduation gown.
The exams, held in June, marked the first Tawjihi examinations conducted since the war began in October 2023. Students sat for the tests simultaneously in Gaza, the Israeli-occupied West Bank, Egypt and several other countries with Palestinian communities.
According to available figures, around 89,000 students took the examinations this year, including more than 25,000 in the science stream, where Rabah achieved the highest result.
Her success came after two years marked by repeated displacement and personal tragedy. Rabah`s father, Fayed Rabah, a teacher at UNRWA schools, was killed in an Israeli airstrike in June 2024. Months earlier, the family`s home had been destroyed after they were displaced when Israeli forces entered Al-Maghazi refugee camp.
She said her family had been forced to move so many times that she could no longer remember the exact number.
"I lost half of my books, but I never gave up on my goals," Rabah said, recalling the constant fear, displacement and destruction that accompanied her studies.
Just days before her final examinations, the house opposite the temporary shelter where her family was staying was bombed, forcing them to flee once again.
Power outages and unreliable internet access further complicated her preparation. At times, she traveled to another area to attend private lessons and sit for examinations despite the risks along the way.
Rabah dedicated her achievement to her late father, as well as her mother, siblings and teachers. After the results were announced, relatives and neighbors celebrated as she embraced family members, accepted bouquets of flowers and posed for photographs beneath a portrait of her father.
She now hopes to study medicine, describing it as the dream her father had always envisioned for her.
"My greatest hope is that all my hard work will be recognized and that I will receive a full scholarship to study medicine," she said.
Her mother, Feryal Ahmed Rabah, said the achievement had brought hope back to the family after months of grief and hardship. She recalled that her daughter often studied using the light from a mobile phone torch during power cuts.
"The joy is indescribable. I expected her to be among the top students, but she became the top student in all of Palestine," she told AFP, saying the family`s happiness had returned despite the loss of her husband and the repeated displacement caused by the war.
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