An Israeli college that reached the finals of a Spanish environmental-architecture competition has been disqualified because it is situated in an Israeli settlement in the occupied West Bank. The college, the Ariel University Center of Samaria, was among 20 university architecture departments from around the world selected for the finals of the Solar Decathlon, sponsored by Spain’s Housing Ministry, after a two-year competition. The college, which has 10,000 students, including many Arabs, had been awarded a 100,000-euro grant by the competition’s organizers to build a model house for the finals, slated for Madrid in June 2010. But Ariel’s involvement was terminated after a campaign led by Architects and Planners for Justice in Palestine, a pro-Palestinian group.
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