Mohammed Ibrahim ʿAttia Hammad
Mohammed Hammad (Muḥammad Hammād) (محمد إبراهيم عطية حماد) was a lecturer in Business in the Department of Business Management at al-Aqsa University in Gaza. He was a full-time member of the department from July 2009 until the time of his death – a total of 15 years and 8 months. He was married to Ḥanān Fūʾād; they had three children.
Professor Hammad received his Master’s of Business Administration (MBA) from Near East University in Nicosia, Cyprus and had a special interest in entrepreneurship. With a colleague from al-Israa University in Gaza, he co-authored an article published in English in the Indian Journal of Management and Applied Science in 2020. In it, they describe a study they conducted of 100 Palestinian non-governmental organizations to evaluate, through the lens of Business Continuity Management, their preparedness in responding to an unexpected crisis – in this case, the Corona Virus Pandemic — that could impede their operations and hence their efficacy.
According to an interview Professor Hammad gave to the magazine Youm 7 in December 2023 — just a few days before his death, he had planned to continue his doctoral studies in Malaysia once the war on Gaza ended. In fact, his profile on his Facebook page suggests that he had been working towards a PhD from the USIM University in Malaysia. He had completed his coursework and his dissertation but was unable to leave Gaza for his defense. Nonetheless, an English translation of his dissertation – Entrepreneurial Characteristics and Job Performance in Palestine — was published posthumously in 2025 and delivered to his family.
In that same interview to Youm 7, Mohammed Hammad insisted upon his refusal to be displaced from his home, recalling with bitterness the forced displacement his father had endured in 1948. He called for international support for the Palestinians of Gaza who, as he described, were enduring very harsh conditions. And he spoke of his grief – referring to the killing of six of his sister’s children and grandchildren whose home had been struck by Israeli shelling. His description of his search through the rubble following the attack is heart-rending:
“I was sad when I saw the floors of the house piled up on top of each other and I didn’t know if [those inside] were saved or martyred. I shouted to others to help us and sat on the rubble hoping to find something… I eventually found one thing: a single shoe of the beautiful child Mohammed. I cried bitterly because having found his shoe, I understood that he had been martyred and was no longer present.”
He ended the interview with these words: “We need urgent intervention to save us immediately.”
Mohammed Hammad was killed on 24 December 2023 along with his eldest son, Mohannad in an Israeli raid on his home in al-Jalaaʾ neighborhood, Khan Yunis. On the first anniversary of their deaths, his wife wrote the following on her husband’s Facebook page:
“Days go by so quickly, it has been a year since I lost my heart… and I still do not believe or understand what happened to me. I have lost the most precious and most beautiful gifts of the Most Merciful — my husband Mohammed Hammad and my eldest son Muhannad Hammad. I continue to search for them in the features and behaviors of my (living) children….”
