The new Israeli rules for entering the occupied West Bank are slated to take effect Monday and restrict a wide array of activity, including academic exchanges.
Foreigners visiting the West Bank already face intensive screening. One Palestinian woman, who lives in Germany and is married to a German man, said she worries that the rules will make it even more difficult for her and her husband — and their future children — to visit her relatives in the West Bank. The woman spoke on the condition of anonymity to avoid calling the attention of Israeli authorities to her case.
The couple took off their wedding rings, unlinked their Airbnb booking and deleted their WhatsApp conversations and photos together. Her husband told border guards he was visiting the West Bank for tourism. Still, he faced intense questioning from the Israeli police. In June, HaMoked, an Israeli human rights organization, along with 19 individuals, petitioned the High Court to halt the new rules, arguing that they set “extreme limitations on the duration of visas and visa extensions” that would impede foreigners’ ability to work or volunteer for Palestinian institutions for more than a few months, bar them from leaving the West Bank and returning during the visa period, and in some cases require people to remain abroad for a year after their visa expires...
in a statement in June, as well as make it more difficult for foreign academics to work at Palestinian universities.The new rules allow 100 professors and 150 students with foreign passports to stay in the West Bank — a substantial blow to Palestinian higher education institutions. They rely on academic collaborations and recruit hundreds of foreign passport-holding students every year.