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Israel cabinet moves to accredit university on illegal settlement

Al Akhbar – September 9, 2012

Israel’s government Sunday approved plans to upgrade a college on an illegal Jewish settlement to a full-fledged university, in a symbolic move which still requires a ruling by the High Court and the attorney general.

In July, the “Council for Higher Education in Judaea and Samaria,” a group close to illegal Jewish settlers, recommended that the Ariel University Centre receive the upgraded status, which would make it the first university in the occupied West Bank.

International law defines all Israeli settlement on Palestinian land occupied in Israel’s 1967 war with the Arab world, to be illegal.This includes the still occupied West Bank and Gaza.

Jewish settlements in the occupied West Bank stifle the movement of Palestinians and encroach greatly on Palestinian property and resources. There are currently 350,000 illegal settlers in the West Bank, with the government continuing to build thousands of houses, defying calls to stop by the UN.

The number of settlers grew by 15,000 in the last year, according to Israel’s population registry.

Increasingly, companies and labor unions around Europe have divested from companies operating in the occupied West Bank to protest the Jewish state’s forays into the area.

Last month, South Africa re-labeled Israeli products made in the West Bank as coming from ‘occupied Palestinian territories’, a move that triggered a diplomatic row between the two states.

But Israel’s Council for Higher Education, which regulates the seven universities in the Jewish state, opposed the move, branding it political and filed a petition against it to the High Court of Justice.

On Sunday, the cabinet voted on a resolution declaring the move to be of “national importance,” while ordering that all measures be taken “to approve the decision of the Council for Higher Education in Judaea and Samaria, subject to the attorney general’s stance.”

Attorney General Yehuda Weinstein has yet to present his opinion to the move.

“It is important to have another university in Israel, it is important to have a university in Ariel,” said Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu after the vote.

“I like breaking monopolies and cartels in every field,” he said, noting that there has not been a new university in Israel in 40 years, while the population has nearly tripled.

“Ariel is an inseparable part of Israel, and will stay an inseparable part of it in any future arrangement, like the other settlement blocs,” he said of the settlement which lies deep in the northern West Bank.

Set up in 1982 as an annex to Bar Ilan University, Ariel has 12,000 students in four faculties — medicine, engineering, natural sciences and social sciences — and also has architecture and telecommunications facilities.

Full recognition as a university entitles the Ariel facility to significant additional funding and the ability to grant advanced degrees.

(AFP, Al-Akhbar)

Related articles

• Norwegian Foreign Minister Calls For Reconsidering Import Of Settlement Products (imemc.org)
• Population of Jewish settlements in West Bank up 15,000 in a year (guardian.co.uk)

September 9, 2012 - Posted by aletho | Illegal Occupation | Bar Ilan University, Benjamin Netanyahu, Israel, Israeli settlement, Palestine, West Bank, Yehuda Weinstein, Zionism