Hazem al-Jamali (Ḥāzim al-Jamālī) (حازم حمدي محمود الجمالي) was a scholar of administrative law and a recently-appointed chair of the Department of Public Law at Gaza University’s Faculty of Law.

He was born in 1969 to a family expelled from Bir al-Sab`a (Beersheba) during the Nakba. At age 14, he joined al-Shabiba, the Fatah youth wing. During the first Intifada, he was arrested multiple times and held in “administrative detention” in the then newly-opened Ansar 3 prison in the Naqab (Negev) desert.

With the creation of the Palestinian National Authority in 1994, Dr. al-Jamali joined the police force and moved through its ranks to the General Investigations Department. At the same time, he pursued studies in law, obtaining a law degree from Gaza’s al-Azhar University in 2001 and a diploma in legal studies in Egypt in 2006. He went on to do graduate work, earning a doctorate in administrative law from Cairo University in 2015.

Dr. al-Jamali’s scholarship was at the intersection of public law and civil service law. In 2017, he published (with co-author Hani Abdel Rahman Ghanem) The Public Servant in Palestinian Civil Service Law and the Jurisprudence of the High Court of Justice (in Arabic, Bisan Publishers), one of the first sustained book-length treatments of the subject. His working papers and articles covered a broader range of subjects, including the Palestinian right of return; academic freedom in Palestinian higher education institutions; good governance in the Palestinian political system; and the rights of the disabled in Palestinian law.

Dr. al-Jamali’s students valued his efforts to make the recondite subject matter less forbidding. His January 2023 final exam in the first-year course Administrative Law (LWPR 3324) garnered media attention for the last prompt on the exam sheet, which read: “To improve your marks, write a question that you wish was on the exam and answer it.” 

A glimpse into Dr. al-Jamali’s ethos as a teacher is in this headnote that he penned on the final examination sheet: 

Our dear students, instructors of the future: rest assured that this examination is not meant as a crippling challenge or an attempt at fault-finding. We are confident that it is well within your capacities. Now is the time to harvest. Do not hesitate, and do not let fear overcome your determination to excel. If you have done well throughout the course, stay strong so you can continue your success. If you have not, this is your chance to become stronger and also continue your success. Rest assured: success knows no failure.

A torrent of appreciative online comments ensued. “Wow the best I’ve seen and read. How lucky his students are….” “Where we are, they like to get exam questions from Mars to discourage the student, both at schools and universities.” “May his like be multiplied.” “Truth: Dr. Hazem is among the best academics. I’ll never forget his smile, his nontraditional teaching style that brings out the student’s personality. You have all my appreciation and respect.” 

An Israeli assault on north Gaza residential buildings on 11 December 2023 killed Dr. al-Jamali, along with his wife.

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