Zionist Military Bans Palestinian Women Activists From Higher Education

WEST BANK (KI) – Two months ago, Palestinian medical student Bara’a Fuqaha was notified of a decision by the Zionist regime to suspend her for six months from her university studies.

She had been a third-year student at the Faculty of Medicine, Al-Quds University, in the town of Abu Dis east of Al-Quds.
Another woman, Batoul Dar Assi, majoring in medical imaging at the same university, received a similar decision suspending her for four months.
Fuqaha, 24, says that on 25 June, she received a call from Zionist police summoning her to the Ma’ale Adumim police station, east of Al-Quds, where she was interrogated about her student activity at the university.
“The questions were about my participation in student union activities. After they finished questioning, they handed me a paper containing the suspension order,” she told Middle East Eye.
This Israeli policy is not new. In 2018 and 2019, the Zionist regime’s army issued similar decisions to suspend several Palestinian university students in the West Bank for several months, which hindered the completion of their studies and delayed their graduation with their colleagues.
Despite Bara’a’s denial of all accusations at the Israeli police station, the suspension decision had already been made before the interrogation, she told MEE.
Bara’a hired a lawyer to challenge the decision with the Israeli Ofer military court, but the appeal was rejected. Then, on 24 August, the court issued another decision confirming the suspension.
The lawyer, Salih Mahameed, told MEE that he asked the court to freeze the decision until another session, during which he might be able to reduce the period.
However, Bara’a, who lives in the village of Kafr al-Labad near Tulkarm, says she won’t be able to enter the town of Abu Dis until an annulment of the decision, which is “unlikely”, given the “escalating punitive Israeli policies in the West Bank against the Palestinians”.
Mahameed pointed out that the decision is a military one and is part of a long list of decisions by the Zionist regime that devastate the lives of Palestinians, such as so-called administrative detention, administrative deportation, and administrative demolition orders.