olivewire.org

University Students From Gaza: How They Study Abroad

The acceptance letter arrives. The scholarship is confirmed. The visa is approved. For a student from Gaza, none of that is enough.

Between the offer and the classroom stands Erez — the Israeli-controlled crossing on Gaza’s northern edge that has, for nearly two decades, served as the primary land exit point for Palestinians traveling for education, medical care, and work. Getting through it requires an Israeli-issued permit. And for students holding fully funded scholarships to universities in the United States, Europe, and across the Arab world, that permit has been refused, delayed, or simply left unanswered — often until the enrollment window closes.

This is not an exceptional story. It is a structural one.

The Blockade as an Educational Policy

Israel’s closure of Gaza — tightened dramatically after Hamas took control of the Strip in June 2007 — was framed in security terms. But its effects on civilian life, including higher education, have been comprehensively documented by rights organizations and UN bodies. Gisha: Legal Center for Freedom of Movement, an Israeli NGO that has litigated hundreds of exit cases for Gazan students, describes the permit system as one in which the default is denial and the burden of proof falls entirely on the applicant — often without any explanation given for refusal.

In its landmark 2012 report Scale of Control, Gisha documented how Israel regulates movement in and out of Gaza not through transparent legal criteria but through a largely invisible bureaucratic system. Permit applications are processed — or not — by the Coordinator of Government Activities in the Territories (COGAT). Reasons for denial are rarely provided. Appeals are possible in theory; in practice, by the time a denial is appealed, an academic semester has already started on the other side of the world.

UNCTAD has repeatedly flagged the damage to Gaza’s human capital. In its 2021 report on the Palestinian economy, UNCTAD described the blockade as producing a “de-development” effect — a reversal of development gains — with restrictions on movement directly suppressing educational attainment and professional formation across generations.

Fulbright Gaza: When the US Government Could Not Help Its Own Scholars

The most documented cases of permit refusals involve the United States government’s own flagship scholarship program. The Fulbright Program, administered by the US Department of State, is one of the most competitive academic exchange programs in the world. Being selected is a distinction that typically opens every door.

In 2008, seven Palestinian students from Gaza were awarded Fulbright scholarships to study at American universities. All seven were initially denied exit permits by Israel. The case became public only after the US Embassy in Tel Aviv intervened directly — an extraordinary step — and, after weeks of pressure, Israel agreed to allow most of them to leave. But the episode exposed the mechanics plainly: even the imprimatur of the US State Department was not sufficient, on its own, to secure passage through Erez for a Gazan student.

The 2008 crisis was widely reported at the time, including by The New York Times and The Guardian, and prompted a formal State Department statement expressing concern over Israel’s refusals. It did not prompt a change in the permit system.

The pattern continued. Gisha’s case files from subsequent years document Fulbright-selected students, Chevening scholars, and recipients of scholarships from German, Dutch, and Arab government programs all encountering the same wall. In some cases, the students were able to leave after months of advocacy. In others, they were not — and the scholarship lapsed.

Hisham Sharabati and the Human Cost of Delay

Among the individuals whose cases entered the public record is Hisham Sharabati, a Palestinian from Gaza whose situation was taken up by Gisha in legal proceedings against the Israeli military. Sharabati’s case — like many that Gisha has litigated — illustrates the particular cruelty of the system’s timing: permits are processed slowly enough, and denied late enough, that students miss registration deadlines before any legal remedy can be applied.

Gisha’s legal director has described the organization’s experience with student exit cases in published interviews and reports as one of fighting for individual exemptions to what is, in effect, a blanket presumption against movement. The Israeli Supreme Court has in several instances ordered the state to process individual cases, but has declined to rule against the permit system as a whole.

What emerges from Gisha’s documentation across the 2008–2024 period is a cumulative portrait: hundreds of students who held valid scholarships, valid visas, and in many cases active advocacy from foreign governments and universities — and who nonetheless could not leave. Some left via the Rafah crossing into Egypt when it was open, a route that was irregular, expensive, and unavailable during the many periods when Rafah was closed. Others deferred for a year, then two, then gave up. Others enrolled in distance programs that provided a fraction of the academic and professional experience they had been offered.

After October 2023: A Complete Foreclosure

The space that existed for individual cases — narrow, exhausting, dependent on advocacy organizations and foreign government pressure — closed entirely following Israel’s military campaign in Gaza beginning in October 2023. Erez crossing was shut to all civilian movement. The Rafah crossing was closed for extended periods following Israel’s military operation in Rafah governorate. OCHA oPt reported in 2024 that Gaza’s entire university infrastructure had been devastated, with every one of Gaza’s universities either destroyed or severely damaged.

UNRWA and UNESCO both documented the collapse of educational continuity inside Gaza. For students who had been accepted abroad and were waiting for permits or for a crossing to open, there was no longer a question of delay. There was no crossing to wait for.

The students who spent years navigating the permit system — filling out forms, gathering letters from universities, waiting for responses that did not come — had been trying to do the thing that students everywhere do: leave home to study, and come back with something to offer. The system they faced was not designed to facilitate that. It was designed, Gisha and other rights organizations have argued consistently, to control Palestinian movement as an instrument of broader political pressure on Gaza’s population — a population that included, among its two million people, students with Fulbright letters sitting on their desks.

Sources

Étiqueté , , , , ,

Laisser un commentaire

Votre adresse e-mail ne sera pas publiée. Les champs obligatoires sont indiqués avec *