Birzeit University is a public university in the West Bank, Palestine. As a frequent centre of Palestinian nationalism, there has been clashes between its students and Israel Defense Forces. It has been forcibly closed by the Israeli military fifteen times between 1973 and 1992.
Background
Birzeit University was founded by Nabiha Nasir in 1924 as a school for girls and later developed into a junior college. After Israel captured the West Bank during the Six-Day War in 1967, restrictions on travel to universities elsewhere in the Arab world contributed to Birzeit's expansion into an institution offering four years of university education; it adopted the name Birzeit University in 1975. The university became a frequent centre of Palestinian political activity and disputes with the Israeli military authorities.
History December 1973 In early December 1973, eight Palestinian nationalists, including the mayor of Al-Bireh and a member of the Jerusalem Supreme Muslim Council, were arrested by Israeli forces and exiled to Jordan on grounds of incitment and advocating cooperation with terrorist organisations. The deportations provoked several protests across the Palestinian Territories, including some at Birzeit University. In response, the Israeli Military Governorate ordered the university closed down. Following a media campaign by the university administration, the Military Governorate allowed the university to re-open after two weeks.
According to Gabi Baramaki, then vice-president of the university, the university "had been the site of non-violent protests for several years" by 1973, with the university administration allowing students to hold protests despite repeated demands by the Israeli Military Governorate that the administration intervene and block student activism, claiming that the university needed to protect its students' freedom of speech and academic freedom.Baramki, G. (2009). Peaceful resistance : Building a palestinian university under occupation. Pluto Press. Page 45. Baramaki wrote in 2009 that:"Unfortuantely, one day in December 1973, just before the university's Christmas break, the outcome of the student protests was more serious for the university. There had been yet another student demonstration, consisting of the usual 'march around Jericho' on campus territory. The army had rushed in and broken it up by beating any student they could get a hold of, as they had done many times before. Still, the problem seemed to be over. A couple of days later, though, [university president] Hanna Nasser telephoned me and said 'Gabi, you know what has happened? They have closed the college.' It was shocking, something we had never anticipated, the closing of a major educational institution."Baramki, G. (2009). Peaceful resistance : Building a palestinian university under occupation. Pluto Press. Page 46.
March 1979 In March 1979, the university was ordered closed for a week following a clash between student protestors and Israeli soldiers which left four students injured.
May 1979 On 2 May 1979, Israel held its annual Independence Day celebrations. As part of the celebrations, the far-right and ultranationalist Gush Emunim settler movement held a march through the West Bank. As the march approached Ramallah, Birzeit students held a counter-demonstration. Clashes subsequently broke out between the two demonstrations, resulting in one Birzeit student being shot by an Israeli settler.
As a result of the clashes, the Israeli government ordered Birzeit University closed. The Israeli military also carried out a search of the university campus. During the closure, students were banned from entering the campus grounds, the phone lines of Birzeit city were cut, and the city's main street was also ordered shut. The university attempted to continue classes via distance correspondence, with some exams being held at professors' homes and some at the Grand Hotel in Ramallah.
The university was allowed to re-open on 3 July, after two months of closure.
November 1980 In November 1980, the university was closed for eight days to prevent the student council from organising Palestine Week, an annual event at the university celebrating Palestinian culture and identity, including hosting plays and poetry readings. The Israeli government claimed that Palestine Week was a political event, not a cultural one, aimed at provoking anti-Israel sentiments.
The forced closure of the university sparked protests across the West Bank. Eleven protestors were injured after being shot by Israeli forces using live ammunition to disperse the protests, some of which had thrown stones at Israeli military vehicles. The forced closure also sparked some controversy among some Israelis.
November 1981
In November 1981, Israeli Minister of Defence Ariel Sharon re-organised the Military Governorate into the Israeli Civil Administration, appointing Menahem Milson as new head of the Israeli occupation of the West Bank. Scepticism that the re-organisation was a prelude to annexation and the timing of the re-organisation coinciding with Balfour Day led to a significant outbreak of protests across Palestine. During the protests, the Israeli military ordered Birzeit University closed. The Israeli military also carried out arrests of Baramki, several of the university's administration staff, and the entirety of the student union council. The forced closure of the university inflamed the protests and was controversial inside Israel, leading to the creation of the Israeli Solidarity Committee for Birzeit University.
The university was allowed to re-open on 4 January 1982, two months later. Even as the university re-opened, several members of the student union council were kept under house arrest by the Israeli military.
February 1982 In mid-February 1982, Israeli Civil Administration official Zion Gabai visited the Birzeit University campus to have a meeting with the university administration with the goal of enforcing Israeli Military Order No. 854, which gave the Civil Administration greater control over Palestinian universities. As a response to the meeting and to alleged violations of academic freedom, including several incursions by the Israeli military into the campus to tear down posters and the expulsion from the West Bank of a lecturer in late January, the student council declared a three-day student strike. During Gabai's meeting, a group of students held a protest outside of the administration building against the visit. When Gabai left the building at the end of the meeting, he was attacked by the protesting students, who threw stones at him and burned his yarmulke, until he fired a gun into the air to be able to escape. The university administration claimed that it had asked Gabai to postpone the meeting out of fear of potential protests. The protesting students claimed that Gabai had been wearing clothing similar to that worn by the far-right and ultranationalist Gush Emunim settler movement.
As a result of the attack on Gabai, the Israeli military ordered the university closed for two months. The forced closure provoked a small wave of protests across Palestine. The closure of the university also prevented a scheduled visiting lecture by British physicist Freeman Dyson, a frequent supporter of the university, who subsequently called for academic freedom in Palestine to be respected when giving his acceptance speech for the Wolf Prize in Physics later in March 1982.
The university was allowed to re-open in mid-April 1982.
July 1982 In June 1982, Israel invaded Lebanon, aiming to put an end to the Palestinian insurgency in South Lebanon and to install a pro-Israel government in Lebanon, beginning the 1982 Lebanon War. A number of protests against the war took place in Palestine, including some by Birzeit University students, resulting in dozens of the students being arrested after Israeli forces dispersed the protests. Acting university president Gabi Baramaki alleged that the largest of the student protests against the war broke out after the Israeli military raided a student dormitory in nighttime, arresting forty students and forcing them to shout out anti-PLO slogans as they were marched through the streets to detention facilities. In response to the protests, Israeli Minister of Defence Ariel Sharon personally ordered the university to be shut down for three months, the second Palestinian university to be ordered shut due to anti-Lebanon War protests after Bethlehem University.
Several dozen more of the university's students were arrested after gathering in an East Jerusalem high school to try and continue their classes. Jerusalem District Police spokesperson Ziv Rotem stated that the arrests were made "on suspicion that their presence would disrupt public order." The university administration claimed that the closure was part of "an intensification and escalation of disruptive acts against Birzeit," including nighttime raids on dormitories, arrests of student council members, the erection of roadblocks preventing access to campus, confiscation of the ID cards that students needed to be legally allowed to travel from place to place in the West Bank, and intrusions of settlers onto the campus grounds.
Following the university's re-opening later in 1982, a number of Birzeit faculty members holding non-Palestinian passports as well as faculty members from other universities in Palestine, were expelled from the West Bank by the Israeli military after refusing to sign a pledge opposing the PLO.
February 1984 On 31 January 1984, around 400 Birzeit students held a demonstration on campus protesting the news of a Jewish Underground plot to blow up the Dome of the Rock as well as the death of a 17-year-old in Nablus, who had been killed by Israeli gunfire when a group of youth threw stones at an Israeli patrol. The Israeli military deployed soldiers to disperse the demonstration, surrounding the university for five hours. The Israeli military subsequently ordered the university's campus to be closed for three months, citing "violent disturbances and grave violations of public order" and stating that it would "not permit students motivated by the P.L.O. and activated by hostile elements to exploit institutions of higher education in Judea, Samaria and the Gaza Strip for incitement and hostile activities."
The university was originally allowed to continue its classes at the university's new campus, then still under construction, but the new campus was also subsequently ordered closed as well.
March 1985 In early March 1985, the Israeli military raided the Birzeit University campus, arresting around fifty people and seized a number of books and posters that it deemed "inciting material." The university claimed that the seized material was composed of literature that was the Israeli government had only banned in the West Bank, not in Israel. The Israeli military subsequently ordered the university closed for two months.
A group of 400 French academics, including Laurent Schwartz, Jean-Claude Pecker, and Pierre Vidal-Naquet, signed a petition addressed to the Israeli government calling for it to reverse the closure. American member of Congress John Conyers also spoke out against the closure.
The university was allowed to re-open on 8 May 1985. Following the re-opening, the Israeli Coordinator of Government Activities in the Territories indicated that it would adopt a less strict approach in the future, with "more emphasis on taking specific measures against individuals who are engaged in incitement or other such activities, rather than collective measure against the universities as a whole."
December 1986