Israel Prize winners to Barak: Let Gazans study in W. Bank

[cali]

By DAN IZENBERG
29/04/2010 05:01

Ten Israel Prize winners and more than 50 other academics and intellectuals wrote to Defense Minister Ehud Barak on Wednesday, asking him to lift the sweeping prohibition preventing students from the Gaza Strip from studying in West Bank universities.

The signatories included 2010 Israel Prize winners Avishai Margalit and Yehoshua Kolodny, and past winners David Tartakover, Jad Neeman, Yehoshua Sobol and Nir Baram.

“We have learned that since 2000 there has been a blanket ban preventing residents of the Gaza Strip from traveling to the West Bank for studies,” the authors of the letter wrote to Barak and Deputy Defense Minister Matan Vilna’i.

“The ban has dealt a severe blow to higher education in Gaza and to society at large, especially considering the fact that the study of vital professions such as occupational therapy, dentistry, physical therapy, speech therapy and health system management is offered only in the West Bank and not in the Gaza Strip.

<snip>

http://www.jpost.com/Israel/Article.aspx?id=174200

[LeftishBrit]

1. Fully agree with them!

This restriction is seriously damaging to Gazan education, and thus to the functioning and development of society.

If academic boycotts are wrong for Israel (they are), they are also wrong for Palestine.

[Ken Burch]

2. Gaza and the West Bank will have to end up being part of the same country at some point

They can't survive as separate entities, and it's wrong to want them to collapse.

The Israeli government has to stop trying to prevent a Palestinian state from being created.

[ConsAreLiars]

3. They should also be prevented from denying access to foreign schools.

They are clearly trying to continue their propping up of Hamas by the siege aand slow starvation but also by denying those penned up in Gaza the experience of other countries and cultures.