Educators and students in Palestine navigate classrooms shaped by war, displacement, and chronic uncertainty, carrying complex emotions that can transform into acts of care and resistance. Understanding these emotions in detail is essential to supporting both teaching and learning in such challenging contexts.
Since January 2024, researchers have collaborated with the dean and professors at the School of Nursing and Midwifery at Ibn Sina College in Nablus, Palestine, with support from Université de Montréal International. The project focused on understanding how faculty and students articulate and manage emotions amidst occupation, violence, forced displacement, and uncertainty. Meetings were held every two months from January 2024 to September 2025, engaging five professors and the dean in regular discussions.
Palestinian university professors described the need to remain emotionally present for their students while personally grappling with the impacts of military occupation and violence in Gaza. These discussions led to the development of a co-designed intervention tool, CARE (Connection, Action, Resistance, Empowerment), aimed at addressing two central emotional states: resistance fatigue and qahr. Resistance fatigue reflects the exhaustion stemming from the loss of control over daily life, choices, and inner experiences, shaped by political oppression and systemic exclusion.
Qahr, a concept in Arabic, represents a deeper emotional state that blends grief, powerlessness, and acute awareness of injustice. It captures the suffocating weight of being silenced, marginalized, or erased, while also holding potential for transformation. Qahr manifests in everyday acts of resistance, storytelling, art, and music, serving as both care for community and a political tool to reclaim dignity, space, and history.
Research indicates that even in moments of extreme oppression, hope and care persist in educational spaces. Lessons from Lebanon showed similar patterns: educators and students carry trauma into classrooms but also cultivate hope, resilience, and alternative ways of envisioning life. Palestinian teachers expressed the ability to transform oppression into hope and moments of joy, demonstrating commitment to their students’ education despite crises.
CARE emerged from these insights, offering a culturally grounded adaptation of acceptance and commitment therapy. It provides strategies for educators and students to collectively process emotions, sustain resilience, and support one another. Initially intended to support healthcare professionals’ psychosocial needs, CARE evolved into a training module on trauma and mental health, reflecting the desire of Palestinian faculty to share complex emotions and support students in navigating crisis.
Through the CARE intervention, educators and students at Ibn Sina College explored resistance fatigue and qahr, integrating these emotional concepts into teaching practices and psychosocial support strategies. The intervention was compiled into a guidebook and piloted with nursing instructors, academics, and students in the fall of 2025. This initiative highlights the value of collaborative, context-specific approaches to emotional care, demonstrating the transformative potential of understanding and channeling complex emotions in crisis.
CARE validates the legitimacy of qahr and provides a framework for teachers and professors to process, share, and act on these emotions. At the same time, it emphasizes the need for continued learning from those experiencing qahr, prompting reflection on broader concepts of loss, injustice, and resistance in both educational and societal contexts.
