Overview
- The sisters, Nariman (20) and Roba (19) Irheem, arrived in Valencia and gave a public presentation at the Universitat Politècnica de València on Thursday.
- They left Gaza through the Kerem Shalom crossing, crossed the West Bank to Amman, flew from Jordan to Madrid and then traveled by road to Valencia.
- UPV, three Spanish ministries, EU diplomats and embassy staff in Jerusalem and Amman coordinated six months of bureaucratic and diplomatic work to secure the students' transit.
- Nariman said months of bombardment, power cuts, hunger and destroyed schools made remote study impossible and led her to send repeated emails and messages to Spanish universities seeking help.
- The sisters arrive as invited scholarship students and will spend the summer preparing for UNED university entrance exams to formalize enrollment; the operation brought five Palestinian students to Spain and shows both a narrow escape route and the heavy barriers to wider evacuations.