[News] Israel isolates Palestinian universities

[Anti-Imperialist News]

https://electronicintifada.net/blogs/maureen-clare-murphy/israel-isolates-palestinian-universities 



  Israel isolates Palestinian universities

Maureen Clare Murphy 
<https://electronicintifada.net/people/maureen-clare-murphy> - 11 July 2019

------------------------------------------------------------------------

Israel is isolating Palestinian universities by forcing international 
scholars to leave their academic positions in the occupied West Bank.

Two Palestinian human rights groups, as well as Birzeit University 
<https://electronicintifada.net/tags/birzeit-university>, are calling on 
Israel to lift restrictions preventing international academics from 
working in the West Bank and to publish “a clear and lawful procedure 
for issuing entry visas and work permits.”

Israel’s policy of denying internationals entry to the West Bank, as 
well as refusing and failing to process visa extension applications in a 
timely manner, has affected dozens of scholars working at Palestinian 
universities.


    Ranking threatened

Israeli restrictions threaten Birzeit’s ranking among the top three 
percent of universities worldwide, the educational institution and 
rights groups say. The proportion of international faculty and students 
are key indicators that determine a university’s ranking.

“By preventing Birzeit from employing international faculty, Israel is 
impeding its ability to function as a university that meets 
international standards,” the university and the rights groups Al-Haq 
and Adalah stated.

Over the past two years, four full-time and three part-time faculty 
members at Birzeit, the oldest Palestinian university operating in the 
West Bank, were forced to leave the country and were unable to continue 
teaching after Israel refused to renew their visas.

This year, two internationals with full-time contracts at Birzeit were 
denied entry by Israel. Six faculty members are currently without valid 
visas and another five, including a department chair, “are overseas with 
no clear indication of whether they will be able to return.”

Dozens of international staff and lecturers have been “detrimentally 
affected during the previous two years by Israeli rejections of 
applications for new visas or visa extensions or by refusal to allow 
them to enter the West Bank.”

Many are Palestinians who hold international passports, and the majority 
are from the US and European Union member states.

Israel’s policy toward international academics “violates universities’ 
freedom to expand the areas of research and studies it offers to 
Palestinian and international students alike. As such, Israel is 
blocking the occupied Palestinian population from determining for 
themselves what kind of education they want to provide.”

A regulation issued by COGAT, the bureaucratic arm of Israel’s military 
occupation, allows international “lecturers and advisers” to apply for a 
visa lasting up to three months only.

Meanwhile, Israeli universities “are able to recruit foreign academics 
under a separate procedure that allows the entry and employment of 
foreigners for a period of up to five years.”


    Permit regime

Israel’s permit regime prevents Palestinians in Gaza from studying at 
West Bank universities, and vice versa.

Gaza students once made up some 35 percent 
<https://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2011/mar/21/gaza-higher-education-blockade> 
of enrollment at West Bank universities.

Under Israeli blockade for more than a decade, unemployment among recent 
university graduates in Gaza stood at nearly 80 percent 
<https://electronicintifada.net/blogs/maureen-clare-murphy/gaza-unemployment-soars-medicine-stocks-hit-zero> 
last year.

International scholarly associations including the US-based Middle East 
Studies Association, California Scholars for Academic Freedom and the 
British Societies for Middle East Studies have condemned Israel’s 
restrictions on foreign academics in Palestinian universities.

European academics and researchers have meanwhile called for an end 
<https://electronicintifada.net/blogs/ali-abunimah/eu-and-israels-killing-partnership> 
to EU funding of Israeli academic institutions with “close ties with 
Israeli military industry.”

The European Union has channeled more than $800 million 
<https://twitter.com/EUinIsrael/status/1135965199817728002> to Israeli 
researchers, largely through its Horizon 2020 
<https://electronicintifada.net/tags/horizon-2020> funding program.

Since 2004, Palestinian civil society groups have called for a boycott 
of Israeli academic institutions.

Such institutions “have either contributed directly to maintaining, 
defending or otherwise justifying” Israeli state oppression or have been 
complicit “through their silence,” the boycott call 
<https://bdsmovement.net/pacbi/pacbi-call> states.

In what is said to be a first, a European association of mental health 
researchers has just canceled plans to hold its 2021 conference in 
Jerusalem.

ENMESH reportedly took the decision 
<https://www.haaretz.com/world-news/europe/.premium-in-first-european-academic-association-cancels-upcoming-conference-in-israel-1.7452194> 
after a backlash from board members who did not want the organization to 
spend the next two years under pressure from Palestine solidarity 
campaigners.

According to Israel’s /Haaretz/ newspaper, “This is the first time that 
an organization of this kind has walked back on an already approved 
decision to hold a conference in Israel, indicating that the campaign to 
boycott Israeli academics may be gaining traction.”


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