Despite poor educational facilities, either in Israeli schools that neglect their national history, culture and existence, or in the United Nations refugee camp schools, which suffer from other deficiencies, the Palestinians are proud of the fact that they have the highest percentage of university graduates throughout the Arab world.

Alongside the struggle to return to their homeland, Palestinians from the refugee camps or the more wealthy parts of the Middle East, consider securing an education for their children as the most valued of aims. Education has been a cornerstone of Palestinian revolutionary strategy, prior and leading to the adoption of armed struggle in the mid 1960s.

On the West Bank, since the signing of the Camp David Accords, which attempt to legitimise and make permanent Palestinian dispossession, there has been a continuing series of strikes, demonstrations and public meetings to express opposition to Camp David. At the forefront are students, both secondary and those attending the recently established universities of Bir Zeit Bethlehem and AI Najah.

Before the Israelis occupied the West Bank in 1967, Palestinian students usually went to other Arab countries for their higher education, with some going to Europe or the United States. After the Israeli takeover, West Bank Palestinians were isolated from other Arab states, which were restricting their entry anyhow.

Entry into Israeli universities was even more difficult. Besides racist discrimination, there were the barriers of language and poverty; those Palestinians who did make it were nearly always confined to liberal arts courses.

Development of education

This necessitated the development of indigenous institutions of higher learning and the first university established was Bir Ziet, graduating its first class in 1976 and being accepted into membership of the International Universities Association the following year.

Bethlehem University opened as a private institution owned by the Vatican and administered by the De La Salle Brothers, with a student population of under a thousand.

AI Najah National University in Nablus started as a primary school in 1918 and became the largest of the universities, with over two thousand students.

Funding had been a problem from the outset. The Israeli authorities had no wish to encourage the universities and money had to come from outside, from such sources as the Gulf States, the World Council of Churches and United States foundations.

A second problem was the lack of employment opportunities for graduates, driving 85 percent of them outside the West Bank or Jordan for work. Tailoring the education to suit local conditions served only to create an educated class of unemployed and souvenir sellers.

Military occupation

But the major obstacle has been the Israeli military occupation itself. Israeli policy has been to replace the native Palestinian Arab population with Jewish Israelis, in accordance with the racist Zionist philosophy, of an exclusive Jewish state. In order to do this, on the international scene there has been Camp David; on the local scene, indiscriminate terrorism, collective punishment, arbitary arrests and forced expulsions against the Arabs.

The educational institutions are a primary Israeli target. The universities were censored in the publications they were allowed to use and there were severe restrictions on who was permitted to lecture there. But the repression didn't end with this: the universities have been periodically closed by the military, their staff and students frequently detained and tortured.

The reasons given have been most flimsy. Feryal Hilal, Headmistress of a United Nations girls school, was detained because she took part in a strike held to protest the arrest of the Mayor of Qualquilya in September.

Students shot

In November the Israeli military governor closed the University of Bir Zeit, on the grounds of the students attempting to hold a Palestine Week festival. When throughout the West Bank demonstrations began to protest Israeli occupation in general and the closure in particular, the Israelis reacted by shooting over 20 unarmed Palestinians, many of them only teenagers, arresting many more and closing schools.

Among those shot down was Haniah Baramki, aged 14, the daughter of the acting president of Bir Zeit who had protested at the closure of the university as an "act of collective punishment aimed at disrupting the functioning of an independent academic institution".

In an attempt to quell any reporting on the events, the Israelis issued a special edict designed to prevent journalists from reporting on the incidents first hand [unclear: on] interviewing those involved, and [unclear: reported] who were in the area were escorted out when they attempted to interview [unclear: wounded] students.

Palestinian students who are in other countries away from Israeli occupation an not exempt from their violence either. [unclear: Many] Palestinian students are being killed by the Israeli air raids over southern Lebanon.

Palestinian Student Union

Palestinian students, at the tertiary level, in other countries, are represented by the General Union of Palestinian Students GUPS. GUPS grew from a number of separate Palestinian student groups through the Middle East, which existed prior to the reation of the Israeli state. GUPS itself was established in 1959, thus predating the Palestine Liberation Organisation itself.

In many respects GUPS is a normal student organisation, holding a biannual National Conference and holding more frequent meetings of its Administrative Council, where the diversity of [unclear: Palestinian] student opinion is expressed. In other respects it is not. GUPS is a 'base of the Palestinian revolution', to use their expression. One aspect o this is to further represent the Palestinian case internationally, against the Zionist lobby.

In this respect it was NZUSA who was able in some small way to assist, by affirming the membership of GUPS in the Asian Students Association, in 1975, and by moving the motion to expel the Israelis as a non-representative union.

More importantly GUPS plays a role among its own students, in enhancing political debate and activity. GUPS has seven seats on the National Council of the PLO and one seat on the Central Council, where it took a strong line against capitulation to Israeli demands, during the Palestinian debate following the 1973 war.

Military role

On the military side, GUPS plays a role too. In Jordan in 1970 and in Lebanon in 1975 thousands of Palestinian students took up arms in their defence. More recently, in Lebanon, the GUPS established a student unit to join the Palestian training camps, in response to a general mobilisation call, which in turn was caused by the increasing Israeli attacks into Lebanon.

It is this feature which causes a more direct parallel to be drawn between the students of Palestine and the students of the Third World in general. Their struggle is in many ways the same as the resistance of the students of Vietnam, on one side being soldiers for their nation against the forces of a United States government client, and on the other attempting through all the obstacles to gain an education to understand the world better enough, to be able to change it into one where such military struggle was unnecessary.

Don Carson