The Al Mezan Center for Human Rights condemns the blanket Israeli ban imposed on Gazan students who wish to study at Palestinian universities in the West Bank.
Al Mezan asserts the Palestinian students’ fundamental right to study in their own country without restrictions.
Al Mezan also announces that it is ready to help students from the Gaza Strip who wish to study at Palestinian universities in the West Bank, or those who are registered at West Bank universities and cannot reach their schools due to Israel’s restrictions on free movement from and to the Gaza Strip.
  Since 2000, Israel has imposed a blanket ban on students and professors from Gaza studying at or even visiting universities in the West Bank.
This has had serious negative consequences for young people in Gaza as well as universities, the academic sector, and Palestinian society as a whole.
  Palestinian higher education was devised as a unitary system, on the assumption that students would always be allowed to move between areas for study.
Today, certain courses are only available at West Bank universities and others only in the Gaza Strip, meaning that students cannot freely choose what they want to study due to the Israeli ban on academic travel.
  Not only have students in the Gaza Strip missed out on career opportunities due to this ban, but Gazan society as a whole has suffered as it now lacks sufficiently trained professionals in many areas facing shortages in human and financial resources.
For example, there are 35,000 people with disabilities in the Gaza Strip[1] in need of occupational therapists, but there is only one occupational therapy curriculum and it is taught at Bethlehem University, which is in the West Bank, so there is now a shortage of these health professionals in Gaza.
Other undergraduate/bachelor degree courses taught only at West Bank universities include dentistry, medical engineering, veterinary medicine, environmental protection, and democracy, human rights, and women’s studies.
  Gazans can undertake PhDs in chemistry only in the West Bank.
[2] Gaza’s universities can no longer run joint programmes with West Bank universities, nor can they bring in visiting professors.
This has had a highly detrimental effect on academic quality.
Gaza’s universities also lack laboratory equipment and books, which can no longer be brought in from the West Bank because of the restrictions on imports into Gaza.
  The Gaza Strip, in spite of Israel’s disengagement in 2005, is still occupied territory because Israel maintains effective control over its land, sea, and airspace.
Israel controls the movement of people and the flow of goods into and out of the Gaza Strip.
The Oslo Accords of 1993 declared that the occupied Palestinian territories (oPt) should be treated as a single territorial unit and that people should be able to move freely between its constituent parts.
Students should be free to study in their own country; as long as they hold the correct qualifications, there should be no obstacle to entry into the university of their choice.
  Al Mezan views the ban on Gazan students’ studying in the West Bank as part of Israel’s systematic collective punishment of all Palestinians in the Gaza Strip.
  However, last year, for the first time, Israel gave permits to three students from Gaza who had received scholarships from a US-based organization and were registered to study at Birzeit University in the West Bank.
This development comes as something of a surprise, because all permits have previously been denied straight away and all petitions to Israeli courts for permits or injunctions against the removal of students back to the Gaza Strip have been refused.
  This development has clearly established a precedent and could be the start of a change in policy.
In light of this positive development, Al Mezan calls for an end to the ban on movement of students and for guarantees that all those who wish to—not just the three scholarship winners—can study in the West Bank.
  In this context, Al Mezan calls on qualified Gazan students who wish to study in West Bank universities to register there.
Birzeit University has announced that it would provide ample facilitation for Gazan students, including exempting them from the initial registration fees.
Al Mezan announced its readiness to provide legal aid and advice to students wishing to press for permits to enter the West Bank.
    End
[1]National Society for Rehabilitation, “Statistical Report about Disabilities in Gaza Strip,” September 2009, available at www.
gnsr.
org(PDF Format).
[2]Palestinian Authority, Ministry of Education and Higher Education,The Higher Education Institutions Statistical Yearbook,2007-2008,, available at www.
mohe.
gov.
ps.