Mohammad’s story isn’t necessarily heartbreaking. He is a 19-year old, outstanding student from Gaza who wants to study mechatronics (an emerging discipline that combines mechanical engineering with computer science and other fields) so he can join his father’s business. Until now there hasn’t been a mechatronics program in the Gaza Strip. Al Azhar University opened a pilot program this year, but Mohammad prefers to study at Birzeit University in the West Bank, in a program that already has an established reputation. The Israeli army’s district coordination office (DCO) for Gaza rejected Mohammed’s application to study in the West Bank. It has nothing to do with Mohammed himself. He is not accused or suspected of committing security offenses. It’s not personal, it’s just that no students from Gaza are allowed to travel to the West Bank to study.

Again, this is not a heartbreaking story, just another small dream crushed by movement restrictions. Israel’s security establishment has been preventing students from Gaza from studying in the West Bank since the year 2000, in a blanket ban. The students are not asked to undergo individual security checks; they are considered a security threat simply because they are students.

This isn’t an exaggeration. In 2005, Gisha petitioned the High Court of Justice (HCJ) on behalf of students from Gaza who wished to study occupational therapy in the West Bank. Gisha asked that the DCO run individual security checks on the students’ applications. The state opposed the request, claiming that students are collectively considered a risk group and that West Bank universities serve as “greenhouses for growing terrorists”. The HCJ rejected the petition in 2007, but it did recommend that a mechanism be established to individually examine such requests. Despite this recommendation, no student from the Gaza Strip has been allowed to study in the West Bank, apart from three who were allowed to exit in 2010 as an exception to the rule and at the request of the US. We repeat: so far – four years since the HCJ recommendation and 11 years since the ban on student travel was put in place – only three students have received permission to study in the West Bank.

The ban has a chilling effect. As time goes by, fewer and fewer students ask for a permit to study in the West Bank, simply because they know they won’t get it.

The sweeping ban on movement doesn’t just hurt individuals, it hurts Palestinian society as a whole. Picture: Al Azhar University

A blow to Palestinian society

The sweeping ban on movement doesn’t just hurt individuals, it hurts Palestinian society as a whole. Since the higher education system is more developed in the West Bank, cutting it off from the Gaza impairs the advancement of education and socioeconomic development in general in the Strip.

There are nine universities in the West Bank, as opposed to five in Gaza. The West Bank also has dozens of colleges. West Bank universities offer a much wider variety of programs including degrees in occupational therapy, medical engineering, veterinary medicine, and democracy and human rights, which are not available in the Strip. In fact, in 2010, the number of undergraduate programs and internships offered in the West Bank was 23% higher than the number offered in the Gaza Strip. It was 60% higher for graduate programs. At Gaza universities there is also a shortage of books, facilities and lab equipment and the student to teacher ratio in the Gaza Strip is twice that of the West Bank.

In addition to the lack of advanced studies, Gaza is short on skilled professionals: it has physicians who have not had sufficient training and a shortage of occupational therapists and dentists. For example, the Gaza Strip has no university-affiliated hospital and students are unable to complete their medical residency properly. Similarly, in the field of rehabilitation, while Gaza residents desperately need access to accredited therapists, Israel refuses to allow Gaza students to travel to the West Bank for training in occupational therapy.

And so, even as some Israeli politicians berate the Palestinian education system for teaching hatred, only a few have taken action against the ban on student travel to the West Bank to enroll in subjects like gender studies or human rights and democracy. After all, all Palestinian students are a “security threat”. And a shortage of physicians, human rights activists or engineers doesn’t threaten security at all.

To clarify, Israel has a right, even an obligation, to protect its citizens, but it is difficult to see how the current policy serves to ensure security. It is particularly puzzling considering the fact that Israel allows 70 to 100 merchants to enter its territory from Gaza every day. Though the scant number of permits given for the business sector do not meet its needs, it does prove that a similar mechanism for individual security checks could be put in place for students.

Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman recently stated in an interview that Palestinian economic development is vital for ending the conflict. Since the connection between quality higher education and economic development is self-evident, one might hope that the same logic would lead the foreign minister and the rest of the government to allow students from Gaza to study in the West Bank.

For further reading, click here.

Help change the policy, write to your ministry of foreign affairs.

In this week’s post we provide context for the MFA’s (mostly) correct numbers.

Israel’s policy in the Gaza Strip: Permit the entrance of humanitarian aid ONLY – no development, no prosperity, no economic activity.

Food: No luxury, no production

True: “All food products are brought into the Gaza Strip, except for those that definitely constitute luxury items”.

More true: Did you know that honey and canned fruit, which have been banned since the beginning of the closure, definitely constitute luxury items? Or that, for 8 months, tea definitely constituted a luxury item, until it was suddenly permitted into Gaza about two months ago, indicating that maybe it is not a luxury item after all? On the other hand, pasta is definitely not a luxury item anymore, since Secretary of State Hillary Clinton expressed concern about obstacles to the entrance of aid in February. Margarine in small packets is not a luxury item, but margarine in large buckets is definitely a luxury item, because it could then be used as a raw material for local food production, giving Palestinian residents of Gaza the luxury of engaging in productive work.

There are no published lists of what kinds of goods can and cannot enter, and Israel has refused to explain which products constitute a luxury, and which don’t. Without some kind of list – how are we to know?

Unemployment: Revealing all the numbers

True: Unemployment in Gaza dropped from 45.5% in the second quarter of 2008 to 36% in the second quarter of 2009.

More true: According to the Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics, the reason for the second quarter drop in unemployment may have been that temporary relief projects, especially for clearing rubble after the military operation, were initiated by international organizations and the local government. The MFA neglects to mention that in the third quarter of 2009 unemployment again rose to 42.3%, as these temporary relief projects ended. Compare this with 32.3% unemployment in June 2007, just before the closure began.

Fuel and electricity: Not meeting needs

True: Israel meets the minimum threshold set by the Israeli High Court for the passage of industrial diesel for electricity production at the Gaza power plant.

More true: The minimum threshold for industrial diesel set by the court is far below what Gaza needs. In fact, the industrial diesel that was transferred in the month of November met just 39.1% percent of needs, creating power outages.

Re-building projects: A drop in the bucket

True: “Israel is conducting discussions with the Palestinian Authority, the US, EU representatives in the area and others, with the aim of establishing an agreed-upon supervisory mechanism, subject to international standards, which will ensure, if and when a decision is made to that effect, that monies, materials and equipment that are brought into the Gaza Strip for vita humanitarian projects actually reach their destinations”.

More true: Israel has refused to allow reconstruction materials to enter Gaza, despite “discussions” that have taken place over the past 11 months. Gaza needs at least 25,000 tons of iron and 40,000 tons of cement for reconstruction. Since the war, Israel has blocked all but 19 trucks of construction materials permitted to enter on an exceptional basis for the humanitarian infrastructure (i.e. water and sewage systems), though restrictions on other materials mean that infrastructure continues to function below capacity (see below). Without reconstruction materials it is impossible to rebuild the more than 3,500 homes destroyed and the approximately 56,000 homes damaged, in addition to over a thousand businesses, factories, and other commercial establishments destroyed and partially damaged during the war. Even if construction materials were permitted in to fix the estimated $45 million in damage to private sector establishments, the ban on import and export ensures that these businesses would likely lay idle, as 97% of factories generally have done so for over two and half years. Some cement enters via the tunnels beneath the Gaza-Egypt border, but prices are beyond the reach of most residents, and many international organizations are restricted from using these materials.

Water, Sewage and Electricity Infrastructure

True: “Israel is conducting a dialogue with Robert Serry, special emissary of the UN Secretary-General, regarding vital humanitarian projects, primarily relating to sewer systems”.

More True: Dialogue notwithstanding, Israeli restrictions on supply of spare parts and materials for the devastated water and electricity systems mean that 10,000 people are without running water, 40,000 people are cut off from electricity, and power outages lasting 8 hours, four times per week are a common occurrence in most homes.

Education: Children paying the price

True: UNRWA schools recently received shipments of education materials, including notebooks and pencils.

More true: UNRWA is the only agency permitted to receive school supplies in Gaza, and only after Israel delayed the entrance of these items for several months. Israel continues to ban the entrance of supplies for two-thirds of the schools in Gaza, the private and government-run schools which educate 240,199 children.

The final section of the MFA newsletter includes a quote by EU Special Representative to the Middle East, Marc Otte. Find here another important statement made by Marc Otte recently in an interview for Al Quds newspaper, describing the EU position on the closure:

“[The] Gaza closure and denying entry to construction materials is morally unacceptable and is a failure. I was in Gaza last week, there were large quantities of cement in Gaza, but the only people who do not get it are the ones who most need it. For this, ban on constructions materials is not acceptable and I have explained this to the Israelis and told them that this is also not in their interest. Our position is clear, especially that winter is coming, and people can not live in tents in the cold and under the rain”.

Post-script: a perceptive reader pointed out to us that in a November 24^thbriefing to the Security Council, Assistant Secretary-General for Political Affairs Mr. Haile Menkerios, made comments in reference to the stalled Serry Plan mentioned in the MFA newsletter:

“Beyond immediate humanitarian needs and the water and sanitation sector, I regret to inform the Security Council that the United Nations has not yet received a satisfactory response from the Israeli government to the proposal, put forward in May, to complete $77 million of stalled UNRWA and UNDP projects in the area of housing units and school and health facilities. The UN has left no stone unturned in seeking approval of this package in extensive consultations with the Israeli authorities, and is confident of its capacity to ensure the integrity of programming. It is completely unacceptable that no meaningful progress has been made in kick-starting UN civilian construction activities essential for the well-being and recovery of a war- and blockade-affected population, half of whom are children”.

“Great efforts” indicate the existence of great obstacles, and the obstacles are indeed great. But ironically, these are obstacles that Israel itself created when it decided that only goods required for maintaining the “humanitarian minimum” would be allowed into the Gaza Strip. And so the recent transfer of educational materials was “facilitated” by Israel’s deviation from its own sweeping policy – of obstruction.

Furthermore, in addition to the fact that the school year began in the Gaza Strip more than 2.5 months ago, the basic goods that Israel has now allowed in are destined only for schools operated by UNRWA, which comprise just one-third of all schools in the Strip – 221 out of 640 schools.

For 240,199 other school students – more than half the student population – who study at government and private schools, the Israeli ban on the import of paper and other basic educational materials remains firmly in place, just as it has been for the past 29 months.

Picture this: its 7:15am, 40-60 children are crammed into a single classroom ready for a new day of learning. Many of them have no exercise books, textbooks or even pencils. This scene repeats itself at 12:15pm, when the “second shift” starts in the same classroom, at the same school, with the same overcrowding and the same shortages (no, this is not Israel in the 1950’s; this is the Gaza Strip in 2009).

A total of 451,704 students went back to school two weeks ago in the Gaza Strip. The new school year promised more of the same struggle to cope, even at school, with the outcomes of the war and the closure imposed by Israel on the Gaza Strip for the past 27 months. For over two years, Israel has refused to allow paper to be imported into the Gaza Strip (except to the UNRWA schools) since paper is not considered “essential for the basic existence of the population.”

The education system, already weakened by the closure, sustained a severe blow when 280 schools and kindergartens were damaged during the war, including 18 schools that were completely destroyed. And there is no possibility of rebuilding them, since cement and building materials are also unnecessary for the “basic existence of the population.” Some 12,000 students who attended the destroyed schools were forced to look for new schools and this has led to an increase in the number of students at other schools, to more than 60 pupils in some classes. At present, almost 90% of the 221 schools operated by the UNRWA in Gaza and more than 80% of the 383 state schools are forced to operate in “shifts” in order to cope with the large number of students.

In the northern Gaza Strip alone, the destruction of 15 schools left 9,000 students without a place to study. Some 4,000 of them were placed in just 2 schools.

At the top of the list of goods that Israel won’t allow into the Gaza Strip are construction materials which can be used to repair the heavy damage sustained during the war and to rebuild the schools that were damaged and destroyed. As billions of dollars earmarked for the reconstruction of the Gaza Strip remain unspent due to Israel’s policies, Israel has chosen a strange way to “teach Gaza a lesson.”