In Bethlehem, Jabra attended the National School.[4] After his family moved to Jerusalem in 1932, he enrolled at the Rashidiya School and graduated in 1937 from the Government Arab College. Jabra won a scholarship to study English at the University College of the South West in Exeter for the academic year 1939-1940, and stayed on in England to continue his studies at the University of Cambridge, because of the dangers of returning to Palestine by boat during World War II. At Cambridge, Jabra read English and earned a BA in 1943 from Fitzwilliam College, Cambridge, where his censor was William Sutherland Thatcher.[5]