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Bethlehem, Occupied West Bank – Drummers and whistlers fill the hall Bethlehem University while groups of graduating students are finishing up their graduation projects.
Families pour in all day, flowers in hand, phones uploading photos. But beneath the celebration, a quiet fear begins.
Siwar Abu Kamal, 21, had a plan when he started university: get his degree, get a job, build a life. Now, in the final year of his business degree, the plan is uncertain every week.
“When you get older, reality surprises you,” he told Al Jazeera.
For many years, education was one of the few ways in which the Palestinian people could keep their faith, a path to peace, dignity and social mobility despite unemployment and political instability. Now, many young graduates say that promise is falling apart.
About 40 percent of Palestinian youth in the West Bank who have a diploma are unemployed, according to statistics cited by the Palestine Economic Policy Research Institute (MAS).
Overall, unemployment has increased twice since October 2023, reaching 35.2 percent at the beginning of 2024 and being at 27.5 percent at the end of 2025. When it began its war of destruction in Gaza, Israel also suspended the work permits of 115,000 Palestinians who worked in the West Bank. Only a few permits have been exchanged, adding to the unemployment problem in the West Bank.
Christy Abu Mahour, 21, from Siwar’s class said: “We see people all over the world getting jobs and living a better life than we ever did.
For these students, graduation requires more than academic persistence. On top of the usual pressures of exams, deadlines and studies, war crimes and road closures turn short trips into long, unpredictable journeys.
Courses move online with each new ride. And many have to work to pay for their degrees as financial pressures at home rise.
“Why did I study last?” asks Khaled Abu Aishah, a fourth-year journalism student. “Did I learn to not get a job?”
It’s a question Enass Elias, the university’s education and career advisor, hears a lot.
“These students are giving their best, and they’re getting to the stage of, ‘What do I want with a degree?’ Mentally, they’re exhausted,” Elias said.
An economy that won’t take its graduates
Every year, Palestinian universities make tens of thousands of graduates, but the local economy is not growing to meet it.
Salsabyl Salama, 25, graduated in 2023 with a degree in physiotherapy. After five years of study and training, the only job he found in his field was a four-month posting by UNRWA in a refugee camp in Bethlehem.
He currently works in supermarket sales.
“It’s not what I dreamed of,” he told Al Jazeera. “But it allows me to trust myself.”
Elias, a university adviser, tells Al Jazeera that he sees this all the time. When the hospital advertises two jobs, it says there are 60 or 70 graduates competing. And despite that, many employers want to know more, blocking graduates before they even start.
Meanwhile, work in the public sector, which was once seen as a sustainable option, has become unreliable.
Elias said: “Students have moved away from government jobs. People who graduate from government hospitals or schools often come back disappointed with what they get.”
That frustration is happening in the face of a serious problem within the public sector.
From 2021, the Palestinian Authority has said he was struggling to pay the salary because of Israel blocking large sections of Palestinian taxes collected instead, a practice that intensified after October 2023.
By mid-2025, government workers have accrued billions of dollars in unpaid wages, According to and the World Bank.
Public sector jobs are now completely avoided. Salsabyl says he “wants to stay at home” rather than work in a government office where he is not fully paid.
The gradual emergence of Palestinian talent
Beyond unemployment, the crisis is driving many Palestinians to leave the country, said Maher Canawati, the former mayor of Bethlehem.
“We see doctors working in restaurants, we see builders struggling, we see nurses begging for work,” he told Al Jazeera. “We see all kinds of graduates who just want to live a normal life, have a good job and have a better future for themselves and their families.”
Over the years, many Palestinians have turned to work across the “Green Line”, the demarcated border between Israel and the West Bank, as an alternative, Israeli companies often offer Palestinians low-paying jobs. But even that strategy was disrupting the economy long before October 2023.
“Even before the war, many workers in Israel were actually doctors, nurses, and construction engineers who chose to build because the money was better,” says Canawati.
MAS told Al Jazeera that years of dependence on Israeli labor had left the Palestinian economy too weak to absorb graduates, and had “turned Palestinian workers into ‘political slaves’, tying their earnings to Israel’s unstable security rather than domestic growth.”
Now, Mr. Canawati says, many are leaving Palestine. In the Bethlehem area alone, about 1,080 people had a master’s degree in the past three years.
“The whole brain is going away,” he says. “Getting refugee papers and leaving Palestine without those who can build the economy, build the country.”
For those who stay, giving up their share completely is sometimes the only option. For Salsabyl, this has meant enrolling in pastry-making courses alongside her catering job, trying, she says, to reinvent herself.
“I started to lose hope, but hope returned to me,” he says.
At Bethlehem University, Elias, who has spent six years working to close the gap between graduates and the workforce, says he sees the same courage in the students who come through his office.
“I always try to tell them: this degree is your tool and your passport,” he says. “You never know what will happen.”
Currently, graduation ceremonies continue until noon. Dressed up schoolchildren walk the grounds as families gather to take pictures in the sun.
“There is joy here,” says Siwar over the beating of drums and chants. “We remain optimistic because people need happiness.”
