Israel
Creates First ‘Army-owned’ University: West Bank Campus
Plans To Double In Size
25 January 2010By Jonathan Cook
Ehud Barak, Israel’s defence minister, approved last
week the upgrading to university status of a college
in a settlement located deep inside the West Bank, a
move certain to further undermine Palestinian
confidence in the peace process.
The decision, authorising the first Israeli university
in Palestinian territory, is expected to entitle the
college to significant extra funding, allowing it to
expand its student population.
About 11,000 students, most from inside Israel,
already attend the college in Ariel, studying amid a
population of 18,000 settlers.
The expansion of Ariel, 20km inside the West Bank and
close to Nablus, is likely to increase tensions with
the US administration of Barack Obama. The White House
has demanded a settlement freeze that is being only
temporarily and partially honoured by Israel.
The United States and Israel have repeatedly clashed
over Israeli plans to extend its separation wall east
of Ariel, effectively annexing the settlement and
separating the central and northern parts of the West
Bank.
Peace groups have been particularly shocked that
authorisation for Ariel college’s upgrade came from Mr
Barak, leader of the Labor Party. Members of his
centre-left faction had previously blocked attempts by
right-wing parties to change the college’s status.
Several Israeli academics also warned that it would
add fuel to existing campaigns in Europe to boycott
Israeli universities, which have been accused of
complicity with the occupation.
“This is all about trying to make the settlement of
Ariel ‘kosher’,” said Yariv Oppenheimer, head of the
Peace Now, an Israeli group that monitors settlement
growth. “It helps to reinforce the growing consensus
in Israel that Ariel should remain part of Israel
permanently.”
Ariel College has grown dramatically since its
founding in 1982 as the West Bank campus of Bar Ilan
University in Ramat Gan, close to Tel Aviv. On
becoming independent in 2004, the college immediately
began lobbying for university status. A year later it
won the backing of Ariel Sharon, the prime minister
then, who described the upgrade as of “great
importance” in realising a policy of “strengthening
the settlements”.
Benjamin Netanyahu, the current prime minister,
declared at the time that a university in Ariel would
ensure the settlement “will forever remain part of the
state of Israel”.
The upgrade was opposed by Israel’s education
oversight body, the Higher Education Council, which
threatened to withhold recognition of the college’s
degrees.
Nonetheless, in 2007 the college renamed itself the
“Ariel University Centre”, a change of status
initially endorsed by the government of Ehud Olmert.
Under pressure from education officials, however, the
decision was reversed on the grounds that only Israeli
military authorities in the West Bank – under Mr Barak
– could authorise such a change.
Despite opposition from members of his party, the
defence minister finally consented last week.
Yossi Sarid, a former chairman of the Higher Education
Council, wrote in the Haaretz newspaper on Thursday:
“Thanks to [Mr Barak], we will have the only
university in the free world whose founders and owners
are uniformed officers.”
Mr Barak’s approval suggested the growing power of the
far right in Mr Netanyahu’s government, said Anat
Matar, a philosophy professor at Tel Aviv Universty.
Two weeks ago, Avigdor Lieberman, the foreign minister
and leader of the Yisrael Beiteinu Party, threatened
to block all legislative proposals from Labor unless
Ariel College’s upgrade was approved.
Yisrael Beiteinu has made the settlement’s expansion a
key plank in its platform because Ariel has a large
proportion of immigrants from the former Soviet Union,
Mr Lieberman’s core constituency.
Alex Miller, an Ariel resident and Yisrael Beiteinu
politician, issued a statement last week welcoming the
decision as an “important shot of encouragement for
the settlements”.
Ron Nachman, the mayor of Ariel, has said he intends
to turn the settlement into Israel’s version of
Princeton, a US town that has flourished on the back
of its Ivy League university.
Mr Barak’s officials said the new status of
“university centre” would be a transitional measure
before Ariel College became Israel’s eighth fully
fledged university, probably within two years.
Ariel College plans to double its intake of students
over the next decade, triple the size of its campus
and build a new neighbourhood for staff. About 70 per
cent of the college’s students are drawn from the Tel
Aviv area inside Israel, as well as a small number of
Israeli Arab students.
The college displays an Israeli flag in every
classroom and requires all students to take at least
one course on Judaism or Jewish heritage, usually
overseen by settler rabbis.
Ariel, the fourth-largest settlement in the West Bank,
is considered by most Israelis as one of the
“settlement blocs” that will be annexed to Israel in a
peace deal. Palestinians say such an annexation would
effectively cut the West Bank in two.
There are widespread fears among Israeli academics
that calls for a boycott of Israeli universities will
intensify following the Ariel College decision. Yaron
Ezrahi, a professor at Hebrew University, called the
decision the “academisation of the occupation”.
Amal Jamal, the head of political science at Tel Aviv
University, said the upgrade would also highlight the
extent to which universities inside Israel colluded
with the West Bank college. “There is strong support
for the college among some academics at Israeli
universities, which co-operate with it in holding
conferences, conducting research, supervising doctoral
students and teaching,” he said.
A vote by the British lecturers’ union in 2005, in
favour of a limited academic boycott of Israel,
targeted Bar Ilan University because of its links to
Ariel College. Similar boycott motions have been
passed annually by the union, though later overturned.
Last November, a Norwegian university, Trondheim,
became the first to vote on boycotting Israeli
universities, though the motion was rejected.
Ariel College found itself at the centre of a
diplomatic row last year when Spain disqualified its
researchers from the finals of a competition to design
a solar-powered house. Spanish officials said the
institution could not participate because it was built
on occupied Palestinian land.
Jonathan Cook is a writer and journalist based in
Nazareth, Israel. His latest books are “Israel and the
Clash of Civilisations: Iraq, Iran and the Plan to
Remake the Middle East” (Pluto Press) and
“Disappearing Palestine: Israel's Experiments in Human
Despair” (Zed Books). His website is www.jkcook.net.
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