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The scenic campus of Birzeit University sits on a hill near Ramallah, 12 miles northwest of Jerusalem, in the occupied West Bank. Vast blue sky is visible from every road and sidewalk. Palestinian flags wave in the breeze.<\/p>\n
The familiar campus bustle of classes, friends and events was violently interrupted on Jan. 6, 2026, when Israeli forces raided the university in broad daylight, firing live rounds and employing sound grenades and tear gas to disperse crowds of students. Forty-one people were injured, with three students sustaining gunshot wounds and three hit by shrapnel, according to\u00a0Al Jazeera<\/a>.\u00a0Eight thousand<\/a>\u00a0students were\u00a0trapped<\/a>\u00a0on campus during the military assault.<\/p>\n The raid coincided with the student union\u2019s protest in solidarity with Palestinian political prisoners and a screening of \u201cThe Voice of Hind Rajab,<\/a>\u201d a film about a six-year-old girl murdered by the Israeli military during the ongoing genocide in Gaza. The Israeli occupation forces wrote in a statement that the raid was targeting \u201ca gathering in support of terrorism<\/a>.\u201d<\/p>\n This was the 26th raid on Birzeit University\u2019s campus since 2002 and the sixth since the beginning of the genocide in Gaza in October 2023. The other 25 universities in Palestine also experience\u00a0raids<\/a>, often in higher volumes, like Al-Quds University outside of Jerusalem.<\/p>\n Attacking Birzeit\u2019s campus, especially while class is in session, is part of a systematic policy \u201cto intimidate students and undermine their right to education, with the aim of suppressing Palestinian consciousness and targeting national institutions,\u201d said a\u00a0statement<\/a>\u00a0from the university following the raid, authored by the Right2Education campaign.<\/p>\n Since its transition from a college to a university in 1975, Birzeit University has been forcibly shut down by Israeli military order 15 times. The\u00a0longest period was 51 months<\/a>, starting in January 1988, shortly after the start of the Palestinian uprising known as the first intifada. In response to these violations and forced hiatus, Birzeit student volunteers birthed the\u00a0Right2Education campaign<\/a>. They provide legal aid to students and faculty facing arrest and imprisonment by the Israeli occupation forces and have begun to develop an international network of solidarity around the human right of education for Palestinians.<\/p>\n The campaign has expanded beyond Birzeit University, with affiliated chapters at Hebron University in Hebron, Al-Quds University in Abu Dis and An-Najah National University in Nablus.<\/p>\n The need for student legal representation has only grown more pressing. When Israeli occupation forces stormed the campus on Jan. 6, they arrested several students, part of a pattern of increased arrests since October 2023, with an estimated 9,000 Palestinians being\u00a0held indefinitely<\/a>\u00a0in Israeli prisons. Sundos Hammad, coordinator of the Right2Education campaign at Birzeit University, said that student arrests have doubled since the genocide began and more than 150 students are currently imprisoned.<\/p>\n The campaign is also steadfast in its fight against\u00a0scholasticide,<\/a>\u00a0which it defines as \u201cdeliberate destruction of education as a means to deny Palestinians the ability to rebuild their future and pursue justice and liberation through knowledge.\u201d Scholasticide is part of the larger Israeli settler-colonial project that seeks to control, disrupt and ultimately erase every aspect of Palestinian life.<\/p>\n Aya Dola, who studies English literature at Birzeit, joined the campaign because she wants people to understand \u201cthe difficulties that we suffer daily just to get a very basic right to education. Even though it\u2019s a fundamental human right, it becomes a privilege here in Palestine.\u201d<\/p>\n One of those difficulties is simply getting to school. Palestinians are unable to travel between Gaza and the West Bank, and checkpoints between local cities make travel tedious. \u201cThe number of the checkpoints and roadblocks [in the West Bank] after the genocidal war in Gaza have increased from 600 before to over 1,000 today,\u201d Hammad said.<\/p>\n In front of the Birzeit University campus stands the Atara military checkpoint. \u201cIf the occupation decides to close the gates, it deprives more than 10,000 students from going to their university,\u201d said Dola. \u201cThey control the process of our education.\u201d She said the closures take a toll on her mental health.<\/p>\n The barriers mean that many students are limited to the school or university nearest to their home. For Nael Bateer, who is from Tulkarem, a town northwest of Nablus, it previously took an hour and a half to reach Birzeit. Now, checkpoints have lengthened the journey to six hours, making it unlikely for other students from his town to attend the university.<\/p>\n Bateer, a second-year accounting student and spokesperson for the campaign, explained that fragmentation \u2014 the \u201cphysical and academic isolation of educational institutions\u201d \u2014 is a calculated tactic of movement restriction by the occupation to separate Palestinians who share the same national identity and history.<\/p>\n \u201cThis isolation limits academic exchange. It prevents the unification of the educational system and forces each region to operate as a separate entity,\u201d Bateer said.<\/p>\n The Right2Education campaign documents Israel\u2019s escalating attacks on education and urges global actors to \u201cdemand lifting of movement restrictions and the prevention of students from Gaza from reaching West Bank universities,\u201d Bateer said. Such \u201cdivide and conquer\u201d tactics, also a pernicious feature of the Israeli occupation for non-students, seek to squash Palestinian autonomy and collective power.<\/p>\n The\u00a0goal of Israeli scholasticide<\/a>, and genocide generally, is erasure \u2014 to convince the world that Palestinians do not exist. The Right2Education campaign is involved in several efforts to confront scholasticide through transnational academic solidarity.<\/p>\n The campaign urges international academic institutions to cut ties with Israeli universities, partner with Palestinian academic institutions, and divest from weapons manufacturing and war profiteers, along with \u201cany companies that invest in the occupation and apartheid that we live under,\u201d Hammad said.<\/p>\n Internationally, the demand for\u00a0divestment<\/a>\u00a0from funding the occupation became louder after the genocidal assault on Gaza began in October 2023. Student movements globally and at over\u00a0150 universities in the U.S.<\/a>\u00a0created\u00a0solidarity encampments<\/a>\u00a0for Gaza \u2014 including one at\u00a0Birzeit University<\/a>\u00a0\u2014 and faced arrests, suspensions, expulsions and evictions.<\/p>\n The academic freedom of students in the U.S. is also challenged when support for Israeli apartheid is on the line. Columbia University students\u00a0Leqaa Kordia<\/a>\u00a0and\u00a0Mahmoud Khalil,<\/a>\u00a0who are Palestinian, are among numerous student leaders targeted by the Trump administration for their anti-Zionist organizing.<\/p>\n University administrations around the world have engaged in divestment conversations, though many conceded only to provide investment oversight committees. Dozens of student governments have\u00a0voted in favor of divestment<\/a>\u00a0and are still pressuring their institutions to take meaningful financial action. But there have been a few successes: In the U.S., the\u00a0University of San Francisco<\/a>\u00a0voted in May 2025 to sell its investments in apartheid profiteers and enablers after 18 months of pressure from students. In New York,\u00a0Union Theological Seminary<\/a>\u00a0became one of the first institutions in 2024 to completely divest from Israeli companies, and the\u00a0CUNY<\/a>\u00a0Union representing faculty and graduate students followed suit.<\/p>\n One particular target of divestment campaigns has been\u00a0Palantir<\/a>, a U.S. surveillance tech corporation, which holds several\u00a0university<\/a>\u00a0research<\/a>\u00a0partnerships and investors, and has active contracts with\u00a0the Israeli occupation forces<\/a>,\u00a0ICE<\/a>\u00a0and the\u00a0U.S. Department of Defense<\/a>, furthering\u00a0state violence<\/a>\u00a0and genocide from the U.S. to Palestine.<\/p>\n In a 2025\u00a0report<\/a>, U.N. Special Rapporteur\u00a0Francesca Albanese<\/a>\u00a0outlined \u201creasonable grounds\u201d that Palantir allegedly laid the technological foundation for Israeli military-developed\u00a0surveillance<\/a>\u00a0systems like\u00a0Lavender<\/a>\u00a0and Hasbora (the Gospel<\/a>\u00a0in English) that are used in Gaza. These systems use artificial intelligence to generate automated airstrike and assassination targets in Gaza,\u00a0according to\u00a0+972<\/em>.<\/a><\/p>\n The American Friends Service Committee is championing the\u00a0Purge Palantir<\/a>\u00a0campaign,\u00a0mapping<\/a>\u00a0institutional stakeholders across sectors like education and healthcare. They pressure investors and institutions to end their relationships with the surveillance tech company. Even before October 2023, students have been resisting academic relationships with Palantir. In 2019, over 1,000 students across 17 U.S. colleges\u00a0pledged<\/a>\u00a0not to work at Palantir due to their contracts with ICE.<\/p>\n After months of pressure from the student body and other actors, a Massachusetts Institute of Technology, or MIT, research program\u00a0cut ties<\/a>\u00a0last year with Elbit Systems. Amid ongoing protests, students around the world and the Right2Education campaign are hopeful that other institutions like\u00a0Cambridge University<\/a>\u00a0will follow suit and divest from war profiteers for good.<\/p>\n In addition to boycotting and divesting from weapons manufacturers, the Right2Education campaign calls for international academia to sever relationships with Israeli universities \u2014 which have deep ties to the arms industry.<\/p>\n Israeli weapons manufacturers Rafael, Elbit Systems and Israel Aerospace Industries were developed from military research infrastructure laid at multiple Israeli universities such as Technion-Israel Institute of Technology and the Weizmann Institute of Science, founded as far back as 1912.<\/p>\n Israeli faculty and students of these institutions created weapons used against Palestinians during the 1948 Nakba, Arabic for \u201ccatastrophe,\u201d referring to the ethnic cleansing and expulsion of over 750,000 Palestinians from their ancestral lands to establish the state of Israel.<\/p>\n After 1948, Israeli universities stretched their campuses over ethnically cleansed villages and even used confiscated books from Palestinian homes to grow their libraries, anthropologist\u00a0Maya Wind<\/a>\u00a0explains in her book \u201cTowers of Ivory and Steel.<\/em>\u201d<\/p>\n Today, programs like Hebrew University\u2019s \u201cHavatzalot<\/a>\u201d unite academic study and military intelligence training. Many of its graduates have gone on to serve in\u00a0Unit 8200<\/a>, the Israeli military\u2019s surveillance intelligence unit, similar to the National Security Agency in the U.S. The Israeli Defense Ministry also\u00a0sponsors\u00a0Hebrew University<\/a>\u2019s \u201cTalpiot\u201d partnership program \u2014 an even more selective program that is often a launchpad into the\u00a0Israeli military elite.<\/a><\/p>\n In the U.S., high-ranking universities like\u00a0Columbia<\/a>,\u00a0Stanford<\/a>\u00a0and\u00a0Princeton<\/a>\u00a0have active study abroad programs and other relationships with Hebrew University, Tel Aviv University and others in occupied Palestinian territory. The\u00a0University of Michigan<\/a>\u00a0remains in partnership with Technion and Weizmann, whose academics helped facilitate the Nakba.<\/p>\n At least\u00a0eight<\/a>\u00a0U.S. universities have partnered with\u00a0Ariel University<\/a>, established in an illegal West Bank settlement of the same name. Ariel has given academic credits to student volunteers involved in\u00a0Hashomer Yosh<\/a>, a formerly\u00a0U.S.-sanctioned<\/a>\u00a0youth organization known for settler violence against Palestinians.<\/p>\n Last year,\u00a0Harvard<\/a>\u00a0ended research ties with Birzeit University and the 12 universities in Gaza and instead\u00a0expanded partnerships with Israeli universities<\/a>.<\/p>\n But others, like MIT, are taking a different path.<\/p>\n International collaboration with Birzeit and other Palestinian universities \u2014 a key tool to combat erasure \u2014 is growing. Recently, Right2Education conducted a\u00a0tour<\/a>\u00a0in the U.K. that focused on expanding collaboration. The tour was fruitful in creating several paths to ongoing institutional cooperation, connecting Birzeit University and U.K. academics, faculty and students. This year, Birzeit University piloted the\u00a0Palestinian Student Research Project<\/a>, modeled after similar programs at MIT and\u00a0funded by a grant from them.<\/a><\/p>\n Birzeit University currently holds several other partnerships with international academic institutions, including in the Netherlands, Lebanon and Jordan. Birzeit is also discussing research and academic collaboration opportunities with Japanese universities.<\/p>\n These partnerships are especially vital in Gaza. All of the\u00a0universities<\/a>\u00a0in Gaza have been destroyed partially or completely. Over\u00a0193 professors<\/a>\u00a0and more than\u00a018,000 students<\/a>\u00a0have been killed in Gaza since the genocide began.<\/p>\n \u201cThe world is dealing with the universities in Gaza as if they no longer exist. But these universities have resumed their online teaching since last June 2024,\u201d Hammad said. \u201cAcademic collaboration with Gazan universities affirms their right to exist and their right to education.\u201d<\/p>\n Birzeit University\u2019s \u201cRebuilding Hope<\/a>\u201d campaign supports online instruction in Gaza in partnership with West Bank universities, provides resources to Gazan universities and seeks to rebuild educational infrastructure.<\/p>\n Since its creation in 1948, the state of Israel has used education as a tool for the Zionist settler-colonial project, enforcing state control over Palestinian educational institutions. Although the Palestinian Ministry of Education oversees education in Palestinian territories, curriculums are censored by the Israeli government, removing references to Palestinian history, heritage and culture. This censorship serves to normalize Israeli narratives.<\/p>\n Hammad explained that knowledge erasure is a type of \u201cinvisible violation,\u201d different from the physical restriction of movement or other tactics.<\/p>\n \u201cThe occupation wants us to say that \u2018we don\u2019t have a past, we don\u2019t have history,\u2019 because our past and history create our identity, and they want to erase our identity,\u201d said Dola, the English literature student at Birzeit. \u201cIt is really difficult to experience [this] as a student, suffering and enduring all these things,\u201d she continued.<\/p>\n Regardless of occupation and genocide, Palestinians have always made space for their history,\u00a0stories<\/a>\u00a0and reproduction of knowledge. \u201cWe believe in our education as a form of resistance. It\u2019s a part of our lives to be educated,\u201d Hammad said.<\/p>\n During the university closures of the first intifada,\u00a0popular teaching projects<\/a>\u00a0emerged, fusing political and cultural education. Educator\u00a0Yamila Hussein<\/a>\u00a0describes these efforts as a fight to \u201c\u2018Palestinianize\u2019\u00a0the curriculum with a vision of national identity and the national struggle.\u201d Leadership during the first intifada distributed\u00a0communiques<\/a>\u00a0seeking to bring a more revolutionary consciousness into the education sector and catalyze the mass mobilization of students and teachers to defy Israeli repression of education. \u201cIf knowledge were not\u00a0resistance<\/a>, the occupation would not be working against it,\u201d Bateer said.<\/p>\n The Right2Education campaign maintains emergency support for universities in Gaza and advocates to sustain education in the West Bank, especially for rural elementary schools like\u00a0Al-Tahadi, which face<\/a>\u00a0ongoing settler attacks. The campaign also facilitates ongoing\u00a0opportunities<\/a>\u00a0for students to tell their stories at international gatherings, despite the risks of arrest and repression.<\/p>\n \u201cIgnorance is a potent ally of the settler-colonialism that we live under. It is a potent ally of the status quo that has been enforced on us,\u201d Hammad said. \u201cEducation can change that status quo; it leads to the Indigenous empowerment of our people and our self-determination, which leads to our liberation.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/wagingnonviolence.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/04\/Right2education3-615x314.jpg\")
The right to education<\/strong><\/h4>\n
\u201cWe need more than solidarity\u201d<\/strong><\/h4>\n
Cutting ties to the military-academic complex\u00a0<\/strong><\/h4>\n
Academic partnerships<\/strong><\/h4>\n
\n\n\nEducation as an act of anti-colonial resistance<\/strong><\/h4>\n
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