The “Judea and Samaria Council for Higher Education” in the occupied West Bank has decided on Tuesday to recognize the Ariel settlement’s college as a full-fledged university. The planning and budget committee of the Israel’s Council for Higher Education had recommended against the move.
The decision was approved by 11 members of the committee, while only two opposed it. The military commander is the final authority governing decisions by the “Judea and Samaria education council.” Hundreds of peace activists protested outside committee meeting, which took place at Bar-Ilan University.
MK Dov Khenin (Hadash) attacked the move as “a negative message to the Palestinians and the Arab world and an overriding of academic considerations in order to establish the settlement project.” “The Netanyahu government has ridden roughshod over the academic system and academic considerations in order to entrench the occupation of the Palestinian territories and the settlement movement,” Khenin said, adding that there was no substantive justification to establish Ariel as a university, that it was contrary to international law and that it would deepen the isolation of Israeli academia.
Peace activists protest against recognizing Ariel College as an official university outside a meeting of the Council for Higher Education on July 17, 2012, at Bar-Ilan University in Ramat Gan. Sign reads in Hebrew: “Don’t let the settlers’ state take over the state of Israel” (Photo: Activestills)
Coalition chairman Ze’ev Elkin (Likud), who serves as head of the Knesset Lobby for Higher Education, praised the education and finance ministers and the Council for Higher Education in Judea and Samaria for “failing to give in to the brutal pressure of the university heads.” The extreme-right “Im Tirtzu – Rebuilding a Zionist Society” movement also welcomed the council’s decision adding that settlement’s university would help balance “anti-Zionist trends” in Israeli academia.
But, more than 1,400 Israeli academics issued a petition on Sunday in which they vow not to take part in academic functions at the “Ariel University Center of Samaria”, because it lies across the Green Line. According to the petition “The establishment of the college in the settlement Ariel, and its planned upgrade to a university, is part of the settlements effort which is at the center of the political debate in Israel over the past 45 years. The establishment of a college in Ariel was motivated by political considerations, without any regard to the needs of the academic development in Israel. The establishment of an academic institution for a controversial political purpose is highly problematic. Once established, decisions regarding this institute will be guided by political considerations, and not academic ones. The academic staff in such an institute will not be selected purely according to their academic level, but will also have a clear political character. Historical examples where the academia was recruited for, or agreed to follow, political aims of the ruling power ended up in destruction of the academic activity, and a mortal damage to its reputation and integrity”. And more “If the Council for Higher Education and the Planning and Budgeting Committee, which are the bodies that manage higher education in Israel, will agree to accept Ariel University into their fold, there will be an inevitable identification between the entire Israeli academic community and the policy of settlements and occupation. The college in Ariel was established as part of a vision whereby Israel continues indefinitely its occupation of these territories. This policy rules out the establishment of an independent Palestinian state, and inevitably leads to the violent repression of the Palestinian population. The Palestinians living in the region of Ariel are barred from entry into the settlement and the college. An academic institution that is not serving the population around it, and in fact ignores and alienates the local population, can not be part of a free academia in a democratic state. The Israeli academia has flourished so far due to it being a part of a free, democratic society, with close ties to the academic communities of democracies around the world. Mixing the Israeli academia with the ideology of occupation and settlements undermines these ties, and compromises its functioning. The continuing occupation and settlements policies destroy the democratic foundation of the state of Israel. Democracy is the essence of the academic establishment, and we therefore see it as our duty to stop the attempt to recruit the Israeli academia in the service of the occupation effort”.
The petition calls: “If such a decision to upgrade Ariel College should pass, we call for all conscientious members of the Council of Higher Education to resign in protest. Members who will remain on these committees following such a decision will bear full responsibility for the destruction of the Israeli academia.” And “We call on the heads of the existing Israeli universities to refuse to accept the representative of Ariel University into the Council of University Heads. We call the students and academic staff of Ariel College to move to colleges and universities within the state of Israel, and we call the Israeli colleges and universities to do their utmost to help in this process.”
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