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New App for Universities in Gaza

Computer Industry Small but Growing

A new mobile app offers the latest news, information on admission and registration, and updated grades from Palestinian universities in the West Bank and Gaza Strip. Designed by a 22-year-old computer graduate student in Gaza, it is already in use in seven Palestinian universities, and he hopes to expand to Egypt and other Arab countries.

“All local universities in the West Bank and Gaza have their own online websites but it has not been accessible for everyone,” Mahmoud Maher Abu Ghoush, the app’s creator told The Media Line. “Using my new phone application will help students get more information about these universities.”

The app was Abu Ghoush’s graduation project last year for a degree in computers from Palestine University.

“In the Gaza Strip alone there are 60,000 smart phones and a majority of students use them,” he said. “WiFi is available across the area. I shared the first version with students and teacher and asked for feedback.”

As a result of that feedback, he said, he added an SMS service. While the app has been well-received in the West Bank, he said, Palestinians from Gaza had some security concerns.

“Some of the professors and IT people have suggested that this program could be dangerous from a security perspective, as Gaza is still under Israeli occupation and it is likely that Israel will rather easily spy on anyone using my application,” he said. “But the program is well-protected as it is connected directly with one of Google's applications, the Gmail service. Gmail allows access to the application, only after sending a confirmation code to the user's Gmail account.”

Unemployment in Gaza is over 50 percent among young people up to the age of 24. Local industries in Gaza have been decimated by frequent fighting with Israel, most recently a war last summer between Israel and the Islamist Hamas movement, that Israel said was necessary to destroy Hamas-built tunnels. The war left more than 2100 Palestinians and 70 Israelis dead, and wide swaths of destruction in Gaza.

The computer field could offer new opportunities for recent university graduates.

“I would advise more students to study computers because it is easy to find a job online if you are talented,” Sami Abu Nasser, the dean of Information Technology at the Al-Azhar University in Gaza told The Media Line.

He said that the level of computer education in Gaza is parallel to international universities but Israel’s continued control of Gaza’s borders has a negative effect. He said Israel has not allowed some advanced equipment to enter Gaza, fearing that it could be used in a future attack on Israel. For the same reason, Israel has not allowed GPS tracking in Gaza.

Abu Nasser says that Mahmoud Abu Ghoush is one of the more talented programmers he has seen, and expects his app to be successful. Abu Ghoush says he has participated in more than 130 online conferences.

“In 2011, when I participated in an online conference about social media websites, an American IT expert suggested that that there was a security defect with Facebook,” he said. “I refuted his allegations, which gained me some fame in the online world.”

University students who’ve tried the app say it’s easy to use.

"I do hope that this application will be used far and wide, not only in  Gaza universities, but also in the whole Gaza community and for more than one purpose Khalil Hamada, a university student at Al-Azhar University said. “This application is very easy to use and even if it would only include half of the information that it does, that would be enough.”

Another student from Palestine University, Ibrahim Hassan, said the app meant he didn’t have to look for WiFi to check his grades.

“By having this application in my smart-phone, I could get information on my grades much faster,” Hassan, a second-year Arabic student said.

Computer expert Abu Nasser says he expects Abu Ghoush will go far.

"I predict that Mahmoud will have a very promising future that will serve his nation,” he said, adding that some of his student’s research has already been published.