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Adalah’s News

30 June 2022

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Over the past two months, Adalah’s team has worked to protect Palestinians on both sides of the Green Line against Israel’s growing attempts to restrict and control their education systems, in violation of their rights to education, freedom of expression and self-determination.

Academic Freedom & Palestinian Universities in the Occupied West Bank

Birzeit University. Photo credit: Birzeit University website
In recent years, Israel refused to issue work permits for international academics teaching at Palestinian universities in the occupied West Bank, and pursued a murky and arbitrary visa policy that left them and their families in constant uncertainty and subject to deportation at any time. In 2019, Birzeit University, Al-Haq, and Adalah launched a campaign demanding an immediate halt to this policy targeting Palestinian academic freedom and isolating Palestinian institutions of higher learning. Birzeit University – despite operating under Israeli military occupation – must be guaranteed the ability to exercise its right to academic freedom.
In 2022, the Israeli military announced a new procedure for the entry and stay of foreigners in the West Bank, which includes regulations for foreign lecturers, researchers, and students to Palestinian universities. The new rules give the Israeli military unlimited discretion to intervene in the academic freedom and institutional autonomy of these higher education institutions, and impose arbitrary restrictions on the applicants, including limiting visas to lecturers with certain areas of academic expertise and more.

Adalah sent a letter on behalf of Birzeit University to the Attorney General and the Israeli army on 26 May 2022 demanding that the procedures be amended and that many of the restrictions be lifted, and to allow Palestinian universities to submit applications for residence permits for foreign lecturers and students rather than requiring individuals to make requests. Israeli universities enjoy wide institutional autonomy and decision-making power in recruiting foreign academic staff and in accepting foreign students, and facilitating their entry and stay.
The new restrictions on Palestinian universities are based on purely political considerations, and violate the right of the Palestinian people to self-determination, which includes their right to enjoy the freedom of economic, social, and cultural development. The new restrictions effectively cut Palestinian universities off from the global academic arena.

The Nakba Law, the Jewish Nation-State Law and Palestinian schools in Israel

Bir Al-Ameer Elementary School, Nazareth, Israel. Photo credit: Arabs 48 news website
In April 2022, Adalah submitted a petition to the Jerusalem District Court demanding the cancellation of a requirement imposed by the Ministry of Education (MOE) that external providers of educational programs declare that they recognize the Jewish character of the State of Israel, and that they do not commemorate the Palestinian Nakba (‘catastrophe’). Adalah argued that these requirements violate Palestinian students’ right to an education that recognizes and preserves their history, national identity, collective memory, culture and heritage.
In response to the petition in June 2022, the Education Ministry acknowledged that the policy limits freedom of speech but claimed it to be constitutional under the 2018 Jewish Nation-State Basic Law (JNSL). This case marks the first time since the JNSL was upheld by the Supreme Court that the state has used it to justify a new policy. The case is pending.
 
Adalah petitioned to the Supreme Court against the Nakba Law in 2011 and against the Jewish Nation-State Law in 2018.
 
Read about the Jewish Nation State Law
 
Read about the Nakba Law
 

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SUPPORT THE RIGHT TO EDUCATION

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Adalah: The Legal Center for Arab Minority Rights in Israel · 94 Yaffa Street · PO Box 8921 · Haifa 31090 · Israel