Higher Education, visas, and dispossession
Israel has issued a harsh new set of restrictions regarding who will be allowed to teach in Palestinian institutions of higher education. Lecturers must have “unique expertise in their field” as determined by none other than the Israeli military authorities. If approved, they will not be able to teach for a cumulative period longer than five years. These regulations constitute a serious attack on academic freedom. Institutions of higher education are a backbone of society especially for a people in struggle. Israeli authorities have also put additional requirements on other travel to the occupied Palestinian territories. The regulations require that visitors provide names and identification numbers for everyone they plan to visit, set strict procedures and time limits for the visas of students and volunteers, demand for some high deposits for security of NIS 70,000 (approx. US$20,000), and further limit visa possibilities for foreign spouses of Palestinians.
These regulations are rights violations on several levels, but what I wish to emphasize here is that these Israeli limitations on mobility—like others—are also restrictions on Palestinian collectivities. Many of the faculty who have typically sought positions in Palestinian universities are Palestinians in diaspora or the spouses of Palestinians with local status. Thus the new regulations impact Palestinians disproportionately. They would require that travelers on tourist visas disclose family relations and land ownership or expected inheritance. Moreover, if one is the spouse of a Palestinian, one cannot apply for student, lecturer, foreign expert, or volunteer visas, effectively making it impossible for spouses to work, study, or volunteer. For these spouses, achieving permanent residency to live and work in the occupied territories without a visa is extremely difficult.
The regulations as initially issued in the spring of 2022 had been placed on pause for the summer in the face of opposition coming from multiple academic institutions and members of the US Congress. A dozen Congresspeople sent a letter to the Biden administration elucidating the problems created by the academic visa restrictions and asking the administration to state its position on the policy. While some of the strangest rules were removed—like the requirement to declare a romantic relationship to military authorities within three months of its commencement—the core of the regulations remain. The most recent version has been analyzed by HaMoked (see also this podcast and report in Mondoweiss).
Israeli exclusions limit connections among Palestinian families and curtail exploration of personal histories. These restrictions could prevent Palestinian students from learning from Palestinian professors whose parents might have left a generation or two ago.
These 2022 regulations build on existing restrictions, both formal and informal. Foreign faculty in Palestinian colleges and universities have long faced insecurity of access and arbitrary restrictions on visas. Generations of Palestinians (and others seen to be aligned with them) know of the tension of passport control, have sat in the small rooms where one might be pulled aside for interrogation. They know the dread of being banned from entry for ten years. Since 2017, Israel has prohibited the entry of boycott, divestment, and sanctions (BDS) supporters into Israel, the global corollary of Israel’s anti-boycott law, which subjects Israeli citizens to sanction if they support boycott. The initial denial of entry to US Congresswoman Rashida Tlaib in 2019 is just one of the most prominent examples of Israel’s politicization of its visa policy.
