[12][13] In December 2023, Professor Sufyan Tayeh, the university's president and a prominent scientist, was killed along with his family in an Israeli air strike on Jabalia refugee camp.

[16][17] Before then, Palestinian high school graduates sought higher education abroad, mostly in Egyptian and Jordanian universities.

However, travel restrictions after the Israeli occupation of the West Bank and Gaza Strip in 1967, economic problems, and quotas on the admission of Palestinian students to Arab universities changed this situation.

[18] Initiatives by local elders and community leaders were set in motion to establish higher education institutions, often on the grounds of existing schools and colleges.

[18] Sheikh Mohammad Awwad, then head of the Gaza Chapter of the Azhari Institute, led the Islamic University's founding committee.

[19] The Islamic University, perceived by Palestinians as a symbol of their political and nation-building efforts, was subject to various restrictions imposed by Israel.

The faculty also awards PhD degrees in four majors: Curricula and Methodology, Guidance and Counselling, Community Psychology, and Educational Administration.

It awards bachelor's degrees in mathematics, biostatistics, chemistry, biochemistry, physics, biology, biotechnology, and environmental sciences.

It also awards MSc degrees in the following majors: mathematics, physics, water resources management, zoology, microbiology, medical laboratory, and botany and mycology.

Admission into the faculty is based on applicants' achievement scores in the high school national matriculation exam (Tawjihi).

[citation needed] In February 2007, during the height of fighting between Hamas and Fatah, the dominating party in the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO), the Palestinian Authority (PA) Presidential Guards and Fatah militiamen stormed the Islamic University campus using mortars and rocket-propelled grenades, setting the library building and parts of the computer center and science building on fire.

The attack destroyed a number of important buildings including 74 labs used by science and engineering students and the Biology Exhibition, which had contained an archive of regional biodiversity and historical specimens.

"[50] In its response to the strike, the university announced in a press release on January 21, 2009, that the university is an independent institution of higher education in Gaza and the largest among the Palestinian institutions, serving 20,000 students as an accredited member of several regional and international academic associations and organization.

The university called upon academics, local, regional and international higher educational and human rights institutions to speak out against the attacks.

[51] Several international academic institutions have proceeded to express their commitment to support IUG and other universities in Gaza.

[55] The university's Gaza City campus was bombed and its buildings destroyed on the night of 10 October 2023 during the opening week of the 2023 Israel–Hamas war.

[56] According to the Chronicle of Higher Education, Islamic University was co-founded by one of the future founders of Hamas, Sheikh Ahmed Yassin, in 1978.

"[60] Samar Sabih, considered Hamas's first female bombmaker, was recruited while studying at IUG in 2003, according to Israeli security officials.

"[62] The Washington Institute for Near East Policy wrote in a piece on USAID funding of organisations with possible links to terrorism that connections exist between the university and Hamas.

Roy also wrote: "logic maintains, institutional clients become automatically linked to Hamas and constitute a base of support for political Islam.

"[65] Arguing against such ties with Hamas were Marcy Newman and Akram Habeeb, who wrote for the Middle East Children's Alliance in 2009: "equally important for our American colleagues is to remove the false label that IUG is a 'Hamas-controlled' institution.

Just as Palestinians in Gaza belong to a variety of political parties, IUG's students, board, faculty and staff represent that reality.

"[citation needed] In 2010, journalist Thanassis Cambanis wrote in the Boston Globe that the university was "the brain trust and the engine room of Hamas".