NEW YORK, 21 November 2007 — The Israeli government is arbitrarily blocking about 670 students in the Gaza Strip from leaving the tiny territory to go to universities abroad, Human Rights Watch said yesterday.
The New York-based rights group said Egypt, Hamas and the Palestinian Authority also shared some of the blame for the students’ plight.
Israel, which has near total control of Gaza’s borders, has denied exit permits needed for students to leave for universities in countries including Egypt, Jordan, Germany, Britain and the United States, HRW said. The students are among 6,400 Gaza residents with foreign citizenship, permanent residency, work permits, student visas or university admissions abroad who have been trapped in Gaza since the Hamas took control of the territory in June, HRW said.
In some cases, Israeli authorities have granted exit permits but later refused to let the students leave through the Erez passenger crossing due to unspecified “security concerns,” HRW reported.
“Israel seems determined to punish all Gazans, including students, for the behavior of Hamas,” Sarah Leah Whitson, the director of Human Rights Watch’s Middle East division, said in a statement.
“Israel should not make young people seeking education pay the price for its conflict with a political or military group,” she said. About 400 of the 670 students are trying to study in Egypt, but the southern crossing from Gaza to Egypt at Rafah has been closed since June 9, the rights group said.
Meanwhile, Hamas charged yesterday that hundreds of patients were “slowly dying” in the Gaza Strip, warning of a health catastrophe due to Israel’s blockade of the territory.
“Hundreds of patients are dying slowly because of the blockade. It is preventing the sick from leaving for treatment abroad and hindering the arrival of medicine and medical equipment,” the health minister in the dismissed Hamas government, Bassem Naim, told a news conference.
“Forty-four people have died since June,” including 13 in November alone, because they were unable to secure Israeli permits to leave the Gaza Strip for hospitals in Israel or elsewhere, Naim said. “We have also run out of supplies for 85 medicines,” he added.
