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.
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Academic Freedom & Palestinian Universities in the Occupied West Bank
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Birzeit University. Photo credit: Birzeit University website
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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.
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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.
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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.
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The Nakba Law, the Jewish Nation-State Law and Palestinian schools in Israel
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Bir Al-Ameer Elementary School, Nazareth, Israel. Photo credit: Arabs 48 news website
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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.
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Stand with Adalah
SUPPORT THE RIGHT TO EDUCATION
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