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In the flurry of letters and comments
against the boycott of Israeli academics who, according to Natfhe,
are complicit through their work or silence, in the military
occupation of the West Bank and Gaza, the reality facing the
other side of the coin, that of Palestinian academics, researchers
and educational institutions, has been ignored. The crux of the
anti-boycott but pro-peace argument is that academia is one of
the few places where constructive argument is possible, and Israeli
academic freedom is the cornerstone for the push for change in
Israeli policy and ultimately, for the end of military occupation
in the Palestinian territories.
The circle this argument fails
to close is that without the freedom of Palestinian education
the prospect of any genuine dialogue on the long-term solution
to the conflict cannot materialise. And in the absence of a sizeable
and meaningful denunciation of Israeli clampdowns on Palestinian
education, what other mechanisms are there to awaken the pro-dialogue,
pro-peace camp?
Under Israeli occupation, all
eleven Palestinian universities have been closed, the longest
being Birzeit between 1988 and 1992, and the most recent Hebron
Polytechnic which was closed by military order for 8 months in
2003. During these periods community-based classes were criminalized
and its teachers and students arrested. Since 2000, 185 schools
have been shelled and scores of teachers and students have been
shot at and arrested. Then there are the less extreme but just
as effective obstacles like the 700 restrictions of movement
by checkpoints, road-blocks and earth mounds. Through creating
and controlling a system of internal borders in the occupied
territories, the Israeli military prevents students from accessing
Palestinian universities far from their homes. University campuses
are then increasingly ghettoised; Birzeit now attracts the vast
majority of its new students from the Ramallah and Jerusalem
areas, and its intake of people from Jenin has dropped by 100%.
This also means students are limited in their course choices;
12 students from Gaza have been denied permission to go to Bethlehem
and study Occupational Therapy (a course not available in Gaza)
despite them not representing a security threat to Israel--a
point the military admitted at the Israeli High Court where the
decision is currently being challenged.
However, the latest round
of Israeli attacks on Palestinian education has been through
the control of its external borders. As an occupying power, Israel
is legally responsible for guaranteeing all human necessities
and rights in the occupied territories, including the right to
education, and is in de facto control of all that goes in and
out of the territories, including foreign academics, researchers
and students.
Those wishing to study or
work in Palestinian universities have to go through farcical
procedures that are bad at the best of times. Students are often
denied entry if they reveal they will be based inside the occupied
territories. This is so common that Palestinian universities
even advise students to claim they will be tourists in Tel Aviv
instead. While other countries' foreign students are given visas
for the duration of their courses, in the occupied territories
they suffer the stress of insecurity and the burden of having
to lie--itself in breach of their universal right of access to
education. The overall message here is clear: if you want to
study, you cannot do it in Palestine.
Only in March this year, two
students from the internationally well-reputed Birzeit University
in the West Bank were interrogated, humiliated and deported,
without being given any explanation. The European female student
was called a prostitute for having had a relationship with a
Palestinian man, accused of having separatist tendencies for
coming from a German-speaking minority in northern Italy, and
asked why she didn't study Hebrew instead of Arabic. The American
student received even worse treatment. He was strip searched,
yelled at, called an "arsehole", had his face photographed
as if he were a criminal, and when it transpired he was half-Arab
the interrogator responded "what a pity, what a pity".
University faculty members
and staff with foreign passports undergo similar ordeals. Most
have to leave the country every three months just like the foreign
students despite having built their professional and family lives
in the West Bank. They have no guarantees they will be able to
stay from one visa application to the next. A few lucky ones
are given 6-months visas from the Israeli military administration
in the settlement of Bet El, but despite being allowed to make
in-country applications, they still have no guarantees the application
will be successful. If the pro-peace camp is serious about the
sanctity of academic freedom, one of first things they should
be actively protecting is the access of academic staff and students
to Palestinian universities, especially if they are also serious
about wanting a partner for dialogue.
In March 2006, two faculty
members of Birzeit University have had their visa renewals rejected,
one of which has been deported. After being shouted at and humiliated
by young soldiers, the faculty members were told they had abused
the visa system--despite having never overstayed--and were denied
re-entry. Both had been legally living in the West Bank since
the 1990s and neither was given any explanation for why they
had suddenly become a threat to Israel.
As arbitrary and outrageous
as it already seems, the repression of Palestinian education
casts its net even wider. In February 2006, a research student
linked to a prestigious British university was detained for 8
hours, asked to become an informant for Israeli services and
denied a visa for his PhD research. In April 2006, the well-known
assistant professor at Columbia University in New York, Joseph
Massad, was refused entry to attend a conference at a university
in the West Bank. In May 2006, the British human rights lawyer,
Kate Maynard, was refused entry to attend a legal conference
in Jerusalem, and less than one week ago, a volunteer with the
Ramallah-based human rights research office Al-Haq, was deported.
The systematic obstruction
of Palestinian education not only violates the human rights of
the individuals involved, but is also an attack on the development
of Palestinian society as a whole. It should also be stressed
that none of the people mentioned here were given any legal justification
for their visa refusals, and given the carte blanche status of
the 'security' argument in Israel, and anywhere in the world,
it is clear that had their activities posed a genuine threat
to the state of Israel (however tenuous the link) they would
have been arrested and charged, even if later deported. None
of them were.
It is increasingly apparent
that any academic activity --be
it research, debate or voluntary work --on the mere subject of Palestine, in Palestine,
is either obstructed or forbidden. So while Israeli academics
and political figures are busy mobilizing their supporters worldwide
to protect the academic freedom of their intellectuals and institutions,
other academics, researchers and students exercising their academic
freedom in Palestine, are effectively being boycotted. The objective
of this boycott is to thwart the advancement of Palestinian educational
institutions, networks and discourse, and although any nationality
can be subjected to it, its target is in fact the constitution
of Palestinian education itself.
If the asymmetries of the
facts on the ground are not enough to justify the boycott of
Israeli academia, then at the very least the limitations and
pretence of the pro-dialogue argument must be realised. If there
is no boycott of Israeli academia and current circumstances persist,
Israeli academics would turn into the gatekeepers of any debate
on Israel-Palestine--for only their freedoms would be secured
by the Israeli state. What would be of the pro-dialogue, pro-peace
anti-boycotters then? Where would they find their authentic 'partners'
to dialogue with? The legitimacy of the fight for Israeli intellectual
freedom is in itself dependant on there being the same freedom
for Palestinians. Such a basic and fundamental point should be
a no-brainer but yet it continues to be conveniently ignored
by those claiming to have the most equitable and long-standing
interests at heart.
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