Report Assails Israeli Policy That Keeps Palestinian Students From Leaving Gaza

Jerusalem — An Israeli human-rights group says that new restrictions imposed by Israel on Palestinian students trying to leave the Gaza Strip to study abroad include a demand that they be personally escorted by foreign diplomats.

Since June 2008, Israel has required that even students who comply with its rigid screening criteria may leave Gaza only if escorted by a diplomatic envoy, says the group, known as Gisha, in a report issued today, “Obstacle Course: Students Denied Exit From Gaza.”

Israel imposed a commercial and military siege on the Gaza Strip when Palestinian militants began firing rockets across the border several years ago. The measures were tightened in the summer of 2007, when Hamas seized control of the coastal enclave after winning a parliamentary election.

Hundreds of businessmen, day laborers, medical workers, and families with ties abroad are allowed to enter Israel from the Gaza Strip every week, once they have been granted special Israeli permits. Students are the only Palestinians for whom Israel demands escorts — a decision that Gisha says has been neither officially published nor explained by the Israeli authorities.

As a result, only a tiny percentage of the estimated 1,000 Palestinian students who wish to leave each year are allowed to do so.

Some countries, including the United States, do not offer consular services in the Gaza Strip but will provide escorts only to Palestinian students with the necessary visas. As a result, Palestinian students accepted by American universities are unable to leave because they are caught in a Catch-22: They cannot have an escort without a visa, and they cannot get a visa because they are unable to receive U.S. consular services in the Gaza Strip.

Gisha has called for the abolition of what it describes as a burdensome and unreasonable requirement, which imposes a huge burden on diplomatic envoys and makes it impossible for many students to leave at all, says the report.

The policy effectively turns envoys into gatekeepers and service providers on Israel’s behalf, says the group, which has campaigned all the way to Israel’s Supreme Court to demand that Israel ease its draconian restrictions on the movement of Palestinian students to and from Gaza Strip.

“The very idea of diplomats, who carry no weapons and have no military training, chasing after ‘security threats’ inside Israeli territory or the West Bank is ridiculous,” the report concludes. —Matthew Kalman