The Baltimore Sun · Baltimore, Maryland · 15 June 1979

CP-1979-004

The Closing of Bir Zeit University Ought To Be Reconsidered

By Linda Compton

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Transcribed from the clipping

“ON TOP of the heated controversy surrounding Jewish settlements in occupied Jordan, there is now the dispute over Bir Zeit University, the foremost school for Palestinian Arabs on the West Bank: Israeli military authorities closed it more than a month ago and are giving no indications it will be allowed to reopen.

Some 1,100 students are being prevented from finishing the academic year, and the senior class can not graduate. The closing has been called by some critics an infringement on academic freedom.

The shutdown of Bir Zeit in the aftermath of student protests has drawn angry complaints from 60 Israeli professors, including Ernst Simon, a founder of Hebrew University, former General Matti Peled and religion professors Galia Golan and Moshe Greenberg.

The 60 said in a statement that: ‘The closing of the university denies the tenets of democracy, free speech and free thought.

As Israeli educators, we are under special obligation to assure that the Palestinian Arabs are secure in the same rights we demand for ourselves, including the right to higher education.’… The West Bank military governor closed Bir Zeit after disturbances May 2, Israel’s independence day… When armed Israeli demonstrators from the right-wing Gush Emunim (Bloc of the Faithful) drove through Bir Zeit in convoy, they opened fire on the Palestinian flags.

A Palestinan student was struck in the chest by a bullet; he has recovered… It was founded as a high school by Palestinians in 1924. In 1961 it became a junior college.

In 1972—five years after Israel’s occupation of the West Bank in the Six Day War—Bir Zeit started a four-year program… Israeli Defense Minister Ezer Weizman has singled out Bir Zeit as a ‘hotbed of incitement’ against Israel and does not seem inclined to change his mind right now. Dr.

Hanna Nasir, the exiled president of Bir Zeit University, rejects the Israeli claim that the university is a political center and not an academic institution. He maintains that Bir Zeit has become a scapegoat for the military authorities who find it increasingly difficult to deal with the deep discontent prevailing in occupied areas.

Harsh measures breed resentment and probably work against Israel in the long run. Repressive policies often backfire… Thoughtful Israeli citizens—like the 60 professors—are dismayed by what they see as attempts to curtail education, for it goes against the grain of Judaism’s liberal, humanistic traditions.”

Context added by this archive

Sixty Israeli professors petitioning for a Palestinian university to reopen, quoted at length, and the exiled Palestinian president of it answering the defense minister. The first sentence of the piece says occupied Jordan; the rest says West Bank. “Palestinan” is the paper’s.

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