Committee on Academic Freedom | Middle East Studies Association | –
Letter to protest the intensification of Israel’s assaults on the education sector in the occupied West Bank
Volker Turk, UN High Commissioner for Human Rights
Jürg Lauber, President, UN Human Rights Council
Francesca Albanese, UN Special Rapporteur on the Occupied Palestinian Territories
Kaja Kallas, High Representative of the European Union for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy
Marco Rubio, United States Secretary of State and National Security Advisor
Your Excellencies, Madam Special Rapporteur, High Representative and Vice President Kallas, Mister Secretary:
We write on behalf of the Committee on Academic Freedom (CAF) of the Middle East Studies Association of North America (MESA) to express our deep concern regarding Israel’s widening assaults on Palestinian universities and the targeting of students and faculty in the occupied West Bank. While every institution of higher education in the occupied and besieged Gaza Strip has been physically destroyed in the unabating genocide, those in the West Bank face ongoing threats, incursions and attacks by Israeli military forces. Palestinian universities have historically continued to function in spite of repeated targeting by both settlers and the military, but Israel’s relentless attacks on higher education in the West Bank have made it all but impossible for Palestinian universities to fulfill their educational mission.
MESA was founded in 1966 to promote scholarship and teaching on the Middle East and North Africa. The preeminent organization in the field, MESA publishes the International Journal of Middle East Studies and has nearly 2800 members worldwide. MESA is committed to ensuring academic freedom and freedom of expression, both within the region and in connection with the study of the region in North America and elsewhere.
We have written previously about the abuses that Palestinian universities in the West Bank have been subjected to since 7 October 2023 (20 March 2024). However, since last spring, Israel has escalated its assault on the West Bank significantly. Its military raids on university campuses, widespread arrests and detention of students, faculty and staff, and intensification of movement restrictions through, among other things, a widening network of roadblocks that prevent access to university campuses continue against a backdrop of unprecedented settler violence and the worst economic crisis in more than a generation.
Among the most recent violations, on 8 April 2025, the Israeli military raided Al-Quds University in Abu Dis, indiscriminately firing teargas and sound bombs and injuring 30 students. According to an official statement from Al-Quds University, the military encircled the university, assaulted students, held staff at gunpoint and caused extensive damage to property. Such attacks, as noted in a statement by the university council at Birzeit University, are part of the ongoing targeting of Palestinian educational institutions and the systemic abuse of higher education. On 15 May 2025, the commemoration day of the Nakba, military vehicles surrounded the entrances to Birzeit University; this was an explicit threat to raid the campus to prevent an organized protest.
According to the Palestinian Authority’s Ministry of Education and Higher Education, between 7 October 2023 and 29 April 2025, 35 students in the West Bank were killed by the Israeli military, 189 students were seriously injured and more than 370 have been arrested and illegally detained. The Palestinian Prisoners Society (PPS) estimates that since 7 October 2023, 17,000 Palestinians in the West Bank have been arrested and more than 10,000 Palestinians from the West Bank are currently held in Israeli prisons, among whom are hundreds of faculty members, researchers, university students and staff. Most of these detainees are held under administrative detention, that is, detention without charge or trial. According to the Office of Student Affairs at Birzeit University, 153 students from BZU are currently being held. BZU researchers and faculty have also been targeted, among them Ph.D. candidate Bilal Shalash, arrested on 2 April 2025 (released on 20 April), and Tareq Matter, a lecturer in Community Psychology who remains in administrative detention.
Human rights and civil rights groups have expressed growing concern about the deteriorating and deplorable conditions in Israeli detention facilities, as disease and hunger spread, and assault and systematic torture persists. Indeed, documentation by the Palestinian Prisoners Society (PPS) confirms that 69 prisoners have been killed in Israeli prisons since 7 October 2023.
Israel has also expanded and intensified its use of movement obstacles, which include military checkpoints, road gates, earth mounds, and road-blocks (not to mention closed military zones), that hamstring the functioning of Palestinian universities. In fact, many universities have had to rely on online teaching in order to hold classes and offer uninterrupted instruction throughout the semester. Currently, there are approximately 849 obstacles that permanently or sporadically constrain the movement of 3.3 million Palestinians across the West Bank, including East Jerusalem. Furthermore, across the West Bank, universities, like all institutions, are facing debilitating financial challenges due to Israeli policies of economic strangulation. The Palestinian economy is experiencing the worst economic crisis in a generation: GDP has dropped by 23 percent and many students are unable to pay their university tuition. Not only do these financial constraints weaken university operations, but they threaten the longer-term sustainability of these institutions of higher learning.
Israel’s systematic targeting of universities is part of decades-old military occupation policies that seek to undermine the education sector. (See the many letters our committee has written, among them, those dated, 13 April 2021; 21 July 2021; 8 February 2022; 26 May 2022; 22 November 2023 and 25 January 2024). The military forces of the government of Israel, and the settlers it protects, have engaged in persistent, gross violations of international legal norms in their unrelenting attacks against Palestinian academics and students. As an occupying authority, Israel’s targeting of Palestinian educational institutions through incursions, raids, attacks and abductions of students and faculty constitute violations of the Fourth Geneva Convention of 1949, relating to the protection of civilians in times of war. The Government of Israel and its military’s obstruction of education is also a clear violation of the right to education enshrined in Article 26 of the 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR), and Article 13 of the 1966 International Covenant on Economic, Social, and Cultural Rights (ICESCR). The right to education is binding in all circumstances and to be protected in all situations, including during crises and emergencies resulting from civil strife and war. Israel is a party to the UDHR and a signatory to the ICESCR and is therefore obligated to uphold their articles.
The ongoing assaults on the academic sector must stop, and measures must be taken to ensure that Palestinian universities can carry out their educational mission and Palestinian students can continue their education unimpeded.
Recommendations:
To the United Nations:
- Uphold the United Nations’ responsibilities in accordance with international law and relevant UN General Assembly and Security Council resolutions to protect the Palestinian people from the ongoing genocidal war and demand the lifting of Israel’s blockade of the Gaza Strip so that food, water, medicine, fuel, and other life-saving necessities can enter and the right to education can be upheld;
- Demand full access to the Occupied Palestinian Territories to ensure that the UN can carry out independent monitoring and documentation, and all necessary humanitarian coordination;
- Implement concrete measures to ensure the protection of the Palestinian people from Israeli military attacks and arbitrary police actions, including the protection of academic institutions, and faculty, staff and students, so that universities can carry out their educational mission.
- Demand that Israel lift its restrictions on movement that have prevented Palestinian universities from resuming in-person education and carrying out their educational mission; and
- Call on all United Nations’ member states to take all necessary measures to ensure that UN operations to protect and provide humanitarian assistance to the Palestinian people can proceed unimpeded, and demand assistance to ensure the implementation of all relevant UN Security Council resolutions, including UNSC Resolution 2720 (22 December 2023) concerning the provision of humanitarian assistance, including food, fuel and medical supplies to the Gaza Strip.
To the European Union:
- Support an immediate and permanent ceasefire and call for an end to Israel’s blockade on the Gaza Strip so that food, water, medicine, fuel, and other life-saving necessities can enter the territory, the educational sector can begin to be rebuilt, and the right to education can be upheld;
- Conduct a legal assessment to determine which aspects of EU-Israel cooperation violate international law, and take steps to remedy those violations;
- Vote for the suspension of the EU-Israel Association Agreement, including all economic, trade and institutional cooperation, in accordance with Article 2 of the agreement and international law; and
- Impose and support sanctions on Israeli officials and settlers responsible for the blockade and mass atrocities across Palestine.
To the United States:
- Support an immediate and permanent ceasefire and call for an end to Israel’s blockade on the Gaza Strip so that food, water, medicine, fuel, and other life-saving necessities can enter the territory, the educational sector can begin to be rebuilt, and the right to education can be upheld;
- Enforce the federal Leahy Law, which prohibits the United States from providing military assistance to a foreign military unit suspected of committing “gross human rights violations” (https://www.congress.gov/crs-product/IF10575);
- Demand that the Government of Israel, its armed forces, and the settlers it protects halt their violent and arbitrary attacks against Palestinian universities, faculty, staff and students, and that settler violence be penalized. At the same time, the role of the Government of Israel in permitting and abetting this violence should be raised as a serious concern in all bilateral discussions, and consequences should be imposed if the aiding and abetting of these attacks persist; and
- Pressure Israel to lift its restrictions on movement that have prevented Palestinian universities from resuming in-person education and carrying out their educational mission.
We look forward to your response.
Sincerely,
Aslı Ü. Bâli
MESA President
Professor, Yale Law School
Laurie A. Brand
Chair, Committee on Academic Freedom
Professor Emerita, University of Southern California
Chair, Committee on Academic Freedom
Professor Emerita, University of Southern California
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