Engage notes with great concern the existence of a ban on Palestinian students attending Israeli universities as revealed in a petition to Israel’s High Court brought by GISHA, the Center for the Legal Protection of Freedom of Movement.

We endorse and support the call from Heads of Palestinians Universities to members of Global Civil Society and Academia for appropriate action to protest against this restriction on entry and re-entry.

We condemn this ban in the strongest possible terms, and call upon academics and trade unionists to protest the ban directly to Higher Education Minister Yuli Tamir.

Engage stands for academic freedom in Israel and Palestine, and for international academic exchange as a good in itself and because it can form part of a path to peace. We oppose unambiguously all attempts to apply discrimination on the basis of nationality to ordinary academic interchange, whether this be in the form of a boycott of Israeli academic institutions and academics or in the form of a ban on Palestinians studying in Israel.

Jon Pike
(For Engage)