A heavy silence hung over the campus of Birzeit University in the occupied West Bank. Only a few cars were parked between the beige stone buildings, on the campus 10 kilometers north of Ramallah, the capital of the Palestinian Authority. Only one of the three floors of the university library remained open, and dozens of classrooms lay empty, locked. On Thursday, December 21, near the football field, also deserted, a few students from the sports courses juggled a ball around a ping-pong table.

Mustafa, who is in his fourth year, had just returned four days earlier, after more than two months at his parents' home in East Jerusalem, "because of the hundreds of checkpoints set up by the Israeli army" preventing him from moving freely around the West Bank. It's an "unpleasant" consequence of the Hamas attack on October 7, 2023, which the 21-year-old nevertheless considers a "symbol of resistance."

Since that date, the vast majority of courses at Palestine's most prestigious university, which welcomes some 15,000 students every year, have been taught via Zoom. The same applies to conferences organized by the faculty, such as the one on "the war on education in Palestine," hosted by Arathi Sriprakash, professor of sociology at Oxford University in the United Kingdom.

In response to Israel's massive and deadly bombardment of the Gaza Strip – which has already claimed the lives of more than 21,000 people, according to the local Ministry of Health – Birzeit published an open letter in mid-October, calling on universities worldwide to mobilize "against silence in the face of genocide" of the Palestinian people. Today, more than 800 academics have signed the institution's declaration.

Settler violence

The conflict between Israel and Hamas has put Palestine's leading higher education institute under pressure. Twice in less than three months, the Israeli army has entered the campus, which has hosted leading intellectuals including American gender philosopher Judith Butler and French intellectual Etienne Balibar. During one of the raids, a security guard was reportedly assaulted at the entrance to the buildings and flags were confiscated after searches of student accommodation, said Rida, an English literature graduate employed by the university's communications department: "They were looking for weapons, or anything that could discredit the university."

On November 2, soldiers arrested Mohammed Arman, the president-elect of Birzeit's student council, outside the university. Five of the organization's 51 leaders are now being held by Israel. According to the Right to Education Campaign, an organization defending higher education in Palestine, 121 Birzeit students are imprisoned today, 45 of whom were arrested after October 7. "This does not even include those who have been released in recent weeks," said Sundos Hammad, the group's coordinator and a human rights activist.

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