Israel’s systematic destruction of higher education in Gaza since October 2023 represents the apex of a long-standing scholasticide that has attempted to undermine the foundations of Palestinian identity and resistance. This paper examines how the leading frameworks likely to shape post-genocide reconstruction of the Gaza Strip threaten to perpetuate this scholasticide and further erode academic freedom in Palestine. It begins with a consideration of several historical themes relevant to the contemporary situation: externally imposed academic cooperation schemes in the post-Oslo period, the neoliberalisation of Palestinian higher education, and Israeli occupation violations of academic freedom. The context of the genocide and its destruction of higher education is then briefly introduced along with the concepts of scholasticide and educide that elucidate the totality of destruction in the Gaza Strip. The paper then analyses several contemporary post-genocide recovery frameworks: the Abraham Accords/normalisation, U.S. and Israeli “Day After” plans, the political economy of rebuilding higher education in an era of transactionalism and disaster capitalism, and global threats to academic freedom. Synthesising these analyses, the final section argues that meaningful academic freedom in post-genocide Gaza requires Palestinian-led reconstruction that resists external imposition, protects institutions from future attack, and embeds scholarly autonomy as a foundational rather than cosmetic principle. Without such protections, reconstruction risks perpetuating scholasticide by repeating historical patterns in which external intervention eroded rather than enabled Palestinian academic freedom and self-determination.

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