"This student applied to a Paths to Peace scholarship to attend NYU for a year. Our student was shortlisted and invited to an interview in Jerusalem. He submitted his request and was told he would get a permit, but when the Israeli official called him in for an interview, he was bluntly told that the price of the permit was to "cooperate" - i.e., inform on the people around him in his village or on campus, etc. He ended up not getting a permit."
---
May 30, 2007

Dorothy Naor introduces the story.

Dear All,

For your information, Israel during the Oslo agreements turned over to the Palestinian Authority responsibility for Palestinians in all areas (e.g., health, education, etc) with one exception: residency rights. Israel retained for itself the right to decide who can visit, live, work in the OPT (see http://www.btselem.org/english/Publications/Summaries/
200607_Perpetual_Limbo.asp.

To make a long story short, Israel has enabled foreign passport holders (whether of Palestinian descent or other) to remain in the OPT on 3-month visas, which have to be renewed. Renewal generally means that the individual has to leave the OPT and re-enter. Apart from the difficulty this procedure causes for all aspects of the lives of those who have to go through this, in March 2006 Israel began refusing to renew visas. This touches not only Palestinian families (where one spouse is a citizen of another country), not only tourists, but also people who have come to work in the OPT. Foreign lecturers at universities, for instance, do not know in advance whether or not the Israeli government will allow them to remain the whole of the semester or academic year. ICRR [the Israeli Committee for Residency Rights, an ad hoc committee] is now campaigning to change this procedure.

Meanwhile, as part of a different but not less important issue, the letter below describing the experience of a Palestinian student came to our attention. This type of thing never makes the headlines nor is mentioned in the media. But it is important that you and others know. Please distribute this as widely as possible.

Best, Dorothy

---

Here is an incident that has just happened to one of our students

Date: Wed, 30 May 2007 04:05:53 +0300
From: Rima Merriman [Arab-American University at Jenin]
Subject: speaking of powerful (or any) action from Israeli universities on
behalf of Palestinian students....

Here is an incident that has just happened to one of our students:

This student applied to a Paths to Peace scholarship to attend NYU for a
year. There were six scholarships offered, three for Israeli students and
three for Gaza and WB students. Over fifty applications were submitted and
our student was shortlisted and invited to an interview .... in
Jerusalem. His chances were excellent, as he was competing against only
one other student from the WB. He was ecstatic; I have never seen anyone so
excited or happy about a prospect. He put in a lot of energy preparing for
the interview, interviewing other students about their understanding of
peace and collecting "quotes" to take with him to the interview, going to
the English Learning Center for English conversation to better his English,
etc.- just walking on cloud noun for weeks. But how to get to Jerusalem?

Palestinians require permits to enter Israel, not readily obtainable] He
called the coordinator of the scholarship, a Professor Zweig, and said he
needed a letter to submit to the Israeli military post at Salem here in Jenin
in order to get a permit.

He submitted his request and was told he would get a permit, but when the
Israeli official called him in for an interview, he was bluntly told that the
price of the permit was to "cooperate" - i.e., inform on the people around him
in his village or on campus, etc. He ended up not getting a permit. By the time
I learned of all this and called Zweig to ask why in the world the interviews were
not conducted in Ramallah, the program had already selected their winners - three
students from Israel, one from Gaza and two from East Jerusalem. The one student
who had made it to Jerusalem from the West Bank (what price he had to pay, nobody knows)
was not selected because of poor English. Our student has now hired a lawyer
(at great cost, needless to say) to sue his interrogator at Salem. The chances of
anything coming out of the legal system is nil.

Not only that, any hope of his ever getting to the US is probably
non-existent now, because the visa computers of the US consulate are apparently on the
same network as Israeli so-called "intelligence" networks - no questions asked.

In fact, one of the rationales used by Professor Zweig for NOT conducting the
interviews in Ramallah is that a. Israeli students wouldn't have been able to get to them,
and b. if our student couldn't get to Jerusalem, he wouldn't be able to get a
visa to the US and that would be that. Apologetically, he explained that this brick
road to peace he is coordinating has nothing to do with politics! He promised
to "remember the student’s name" for next year.

Best,

Rima

--
Rima Merriman, Ph.D.
Assistant Professor and Chair
Modern Languages Department
Arab American University - Jenin
+970 4 251 0801/2/3/4/5/6 - ext. 156
Fax: + 970-4-251-0810
---
The Paths to Peace scholarship programme at NYU describes itself thus.

URL

Posted in

• Academia
• academic freedom
• blackmail
• education
• Israel
• Israel lobby
• NYU
• spying
• students

Submitted by mparent7777 on Wed, 2007-05-30 19:08.

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