LAHORE: Thirty-eight young Palestinians received their dental degrees in Lahore this week, having completed their studies through four years in which war consumed their homeland.
Alkhidmat Foundation Pakistan backed these dentistry graduates through their entire course of study, working alongside the University of Lahore to get them there. The ceremony pulled in a notable crowd Professor Dr Hafeez ur Rehman, who heads Alkhidmat Foundation Pakistan, sat among them, as did Dr Zuhair Mohammad Hamdullah Zeid, Palestine's Ambassador to Pakistan. Air Marshal (Retd) Arshad Malik came representing the foundation's leadership as Vice President, while Muhammad Owais Rauf, chairman of the University of Lahore's Board of Governors, and Professor Dr Mahwish Uroos, who runs Medical Education at the university, rounded out the guest list, joined by faculty from the dental program.
Palestinian Dental Graduates Celebrate
Dr Hafeez ur Rehman didn't dwell on academic achievement alone. He pointed instead to what these students had lived through to get here a war in Gaza, mass displacement, conditions most graduates never have to think about. Their success, he told the room, stands as proof of resolve and hope holding firm under pressure.
Also Read: Bangladesh Restores ‘Except Israel’ Clause on General Passports
Thirteen more names got called that day too, though for a different milestone. These were Palestinian doctors who had just wrapped up a full year of clinical house jobs, and they left the ceremony with internship certificates alongside the 38 new BDS graduates, who also received dental kits to start their careers.
Scholarship Program Grows
There's a promise behind all of this, and Dr Hafeez ur Rehman was clear about naming it. Alkhidmat Foundation made a commitment to these students years ago, he said, and this graduation is that commitment being kept made possible with help from the Government of Pakistan and the Pakistani embassy in Cairo, which worked to keep the students safe while they studied far from home. He wasn't finished, either: the foundation plans to keep supporting Palestinian students until Palestine is rebuilt, and until it has trained enough of its own architects and engineers to do that rebuilding themselves. Right now, the Alkhidmat Palestinian Scholarship Program backs more than 450 students in Pakistan and another 38 in Cairo.
Also Read: Hafiz Naeem Launches Pakistan’s First Education Card in Karachi
Ambassador Zeid took a more personal tone. Pakistan, he said, had taken Palestinian students in the way parents take in their own children. These new doctors, he added, will now carry that debt forward treating Gaza's wounded and sick once they're able to return.
One graduate summed up what years of study abroad, away from a homeland at war, actually felt like. Ahmed Ataullah Mohammad Jabr's voice caught as he spoke: Pakistan became a second home, he said, and the warmth he found here kept him and his classmates from breaking under the weight of it all. He and the others plan to go back and treat their own people the wounded, the oppressed and he said plainly that what Pakistan did for them is something they won't forget.
For Gaza's strained healthcare system, the arithmetic is simple enough. Thirty-eight new dentists and thirteen newly certified interns are a small number against the scale of the crisis but each one represents a trained set of hands that wasn't there before, waiting for the day it's safe enough to go home and use them.