On Israeli campuses Palestinian student activists fear for their safety
Israeli police officers arrest a Palestinian student ahead of a Nakba Day event at Tel Aviv University, 15 May 2022
Maiyse Abuleil reports in +972:
Universities have traditionally been the home of revolutionary thought and hubs of freedom of speech. But on Israeli campuses, Palestinian student organizers are facing violence and harassment from police and students alike.
For over a decade, excluding the past two years due to the COVID-19 pandemic, Palestinian students at Tel Aviv University have held an annual Nakba Day commemoration event to remember the ethnic cleansing of their families. The event takes place in Entin Square, which is right outside the university’s main gate and plays host to all kinds of demonstrations and other social events — most of which happen without much fuss. However, as Israel’s suppression of expressions of Palestinian identity has intensified of late on both sides of the Green Line, Israeli university campuses have been no exception.
This year’s event took place, as every year, on May 15. An hour before it was scheduled to begin, while organizers were still setting up, activists from the far-right Zionist organization Im Tirtzu — which has branches at 20 Israeli universities and regularly seeks to undermine any Palestinian efforts to protest or express their identity on campus — arrived to confront one of the Palestinian students, Rami Khatib. Khatib escaped the crowd, but soon realized that undercover police were chasing after him too.
Khatib was arrested along with two more Palestinian students: Nimer Abu Ahmad and Ahmad Jabareen. They were charged, among other things, with obstructing and assaulting police officers, and Khatib was additionally charged with assaulting civilians. Khatib and Abu Ahmad were released that night; Jabareen was detained for three days before being released due to insufficient evidence.
The students reported after their arrest that they had been physically abused, and showed the bruises and handcuff marks they had sustained from the ordeal. No one from the Im Tirtzu crowd was arrested.