EDITOR: Another sign European political weakness, and of Israel’s intentions…
Today, Israel will be offered almost full membership by the EU, with extraordinary status in terms of non-member benefits. This is done despite all the hot air spouted by EU politicians over the years, speaking on the illegality of Israel’s activities in the Occupied Territories of Palestine. The fear from Washington and and from their own Jewish communities, means not a single European politician was prepared to stand up for international law!
The granting of university status to Ariel College is another snub to Europe, one which did not delay or change its intention to make Israel its favoured non-member. It is a mark of shame for European hypocrisy, and another result of the shame they feel for the events during the Holocaust, shame forever being used by Zionist leaders and PR machine to milk ever-more far reaching arrangements for Israel, despite its crimes against the Palestinians.
Ariel academic center recognized as first Israeli university beyond Green Line: Haaretz
Decision on West Bank campus made despite opposition by Israel’s Council for Higher Education.
The Judea and Samaria Council for Higher Education has decided on Tuesday to recognize the Ariel University Center as a full-fledged university. The planning and budget committee of the state’s Council for Higher Education had recommended against the move.
The decision was approved by 11 members of the committee, while only two opposed it.
Hundreds of left-wing activists protested outside committee meeting, which took place at Bar Ilan University. Meretz party leader Zahava Gal-On said that granting university status to the academic center would “bring about academic boycotts of Israel.”
“The Judea and Samaria Council for Higher Education, which excels in ‘occupation studies,’ has brought Israel to a moral low point by establishing an institution on stolen land which forbids those whose land was stolen to enter through its gates.”
On Sunday, Finance Minister Yuval Steinitz announced he was “paving the way” for the establishment of the first university in the West Bank by making use of “special funding.” Education Minister Gideon Sa’ar sent a letter to the chairman of the Judea and Samaria higher education council expressing his support for transforming the Ariel institute into a university.
Sa’ar expressed his support for the move although he is chairman of the state’s Council for Higher Education, which opposed the move. The 15-member Judea and Samaria education panel was established in 1997 after the state’s council refused to discuss issues involving academics in the territories. As the highest authority in the territories, the law establishing the council was signed by the commander of the Israel Defense Force’s Central Command. It states that members of the council are to be appointed by the head of Central Command, either from current or past members of the state’s Council for Higher Education.
The military commander is the final authority governing decisions by the Judea and Samaria education council, which will be the case with its decision regarding the Ariel University Center. Following political moves to annul the recommendations of the state Council for Higher Education’s planning and budget committee, the committee’s chairman, Prof. Manuel Trajtenberg, sent a memo to the chairman of the Judea and Samaria education council, Prof. Amos Altshuler, outlining why he believes that panel lacks the legitimacy to decide whether to recognize the Ariel institute as a university.
In the memo, which Haaretz has obtained, Trajtenberg said the panel was tainted by conflict of interest and did not meet the standard of academic scrutiny upheld in Israel and abroad. “Discussion must not be on a political-ideological basis,” Trajtenberg said, adding that this would “fatally harm academia.” “The very question as to whether the Ariel University Center is worthy/should receive recognition as a university, when asked in a manner unconnected to a broader context (planning, economics, etc. ) is very problematic and reflects at best longing for a long-gone earlier time – At worst it is a purposeful and serious deviation from an egalitarian and fair basis,” Trajtenberg wrote to Altshuler.
Trajtenberg continued that it was inconceivable that “such an essential decision be discussed and made by a body in charge of one general institution of higher education (and two teachers colleges ) out of 67 institutions [of higher learning in Israel], in which only three percent of all students are enrolled.”
Trajtenberg also pointed out that the panel which recommended the Ariel institute’s transition to a university had not been properly constituted. “In Israel, because of its small size, such committees must in almost every case consist of experts from abroad who it may be proven do not have connections to the areas under scrutiny in Israel.”
The fact that Altshuler himself had headed the panel, Trajtenberg said, “meant that there was no separation between the recommending committee (the panel ) and the body charged with deciding on the recommendation,” referring to the Judea and Samaria Council for Higher Education.
Trajtenberg gave as an example the possibility of establishing a medical school in Safed. “The question was not whether Bar-Ilan University (or any other institution ) would establish a medical school of its own, even if it very much wanted to, but whether the State of Israel needed another medical school. In the end, Bar-Ilan was indeed chosen, but whether before or after the fact is critical.”
Trajtenberg went on to ask: “Is it conceivable that any institution demand that it be determined whether it is ‘worthy’ of establishing an excellent center in some realm, without the above-mentioned process, without studying the need and conducting a competition? Should public money be spent in this way? Should limited resources, human and material, be used in this way?”
Trajtenberg pointed out in the document that the panel had used “only a number of narrow academic standards” and that it had “relied almost solely on materials generated by the Ariel University Center and its progress reports.”
Trajtenberg criticized Steinitz’s transfer of earmarked funds to the institution to further its recognition as a university. “These funds are nowhere near the amount required to fund a university,” Trajtenberg argued.
He added that the transfer of these funds could impinge on the funding of the rest of the country’s universities and colleges. Trajtenberg said the question was not the academic qualifications of the panel’s members, which he did not doubt, but “the mandate of the committee from the outset, and the manner of its work in light of this.”
A member of the panel, Israel Prize laureate Prof. Daniel Sperber, said he was both hurt and angered by Trajtenberg’s letter. He said that six members of the committee were “at least Israel Prize laureates, not people new to scientific scrutiny.” Sperber said “to say we did not do real work is very insulting. I don’t know what his motives are, but he had a whole year, it is in poor taste, you do not leave such a thing to the day before the decision.” Sperber said the Ariel University Center was a “magnificent institution despite the hostility toward it from certain groups.”
The committee of university heads responded that “any additional budgets should have been given to the existing research universities which have been starved for funding for years.” The Ariel University Center responded that Trajtenberg’s actions “served only the monopoly of the university heads,” and that it was Trajtenberg who was guilty of a conflict of interest. The Ariel institute also said the panel appointed by the Judea and Samaria education council had acted with Trajtenberg’s approval and that “its report proves beyond all doubt that we meet and exceed every academic requirement set for us and so it recommended recognizing us as a university.”
The university center also said Trajtenberg’s “actions were in opposition to cabinet decisions, the opinion of the deputy attorney general, to the recommendations of the Council for Higher Education and to the national interest in encouraging higher education in Israel.”
Meanwhile, Altshuler informed the 16th member of the council, National Student Union chairman and social protest leader Itzik Shmuli, that he would not be allowed to vote, because the necessary details about him were mistakenly not passed on for approval to Israel’s military commander in the West Bank, which oversees the council. In response, the National Student Union said it was concerned that Shmuli’s right to vote had been revoked because Shmuli had not stated ahead of time how he would vote, as had other members of the council.
EU move to upgrade relations with Israel
Wide-ranging boost to bilateral relations undermines Brussels over West Bank, say critics
Catherine Ashton, the EU representative for foreign and security policy, will not take part in Tuesday’s meeting with Israel. Photograph: Samrang Pring/Reuters
The EU will offer Israel upgraded trade and diplomatic relations in more than 60 areas at a high-level meeting in Brussels on Tuesday, just weeks after European foreign ministers warned that Israeli policies in the West Bank “threaten to make a two-state solution impossible”.
In advance of the annual EU-Israel Association Council on Tuesdaymeeting , a diplomatic source shared with the Guardian details of the package of benefits that will be offered to Avigdor Lieberman, Israel’s foreign minister.
The EU will widen its relationship with Jerusalem on a range of areas including migration, energy and agriculture. It will remove obstacles impeding Israel’s access to European government-controlled markets and enhance Israel’s co-operation with nine EU agencies, including Europol and the European Space Agency.
The wide-ranging boost to bilateral relations stops just short of the full upgrade that was frozen after Israel’s invasion of the Gaza Strip in January 2009.
One senior EU diplomat, speaking on condition of anonymity, said that despite private complaints of the inconsistency of chastising Israel with one hand while rewarding it with the other, not one minister was prepared to oppose Tuesday’s agreement.
“I was struck by the fact that a whole range of relations was offered to Israel – at the request of Israel – as if nothing is happening on the ground,” the diplomat said. “Most ministers are too afraid to speak out in case they are singled out as being too critical towards Israel, because, in the end, relations with Israel are on the one hand relations with the Jewish community at large and on the other hand with Washington – nobody wants to have fuss with Washington. So [ministers] are fine with making political statements but they refrain from taking concrete action.”
The Brussels-based bureaucrat points out that Europe‘s 500 million consumers constitute almost 60% of Israel’s trade and are an under-utilised bargaining tool.
“The only possible tool for the EU to make Israel change its behaviour is to use the weight and power of these relations,” he said. “We should be using [Tuesday’s] dialogue to get what we want, which is Israel’s compliance with its obligations under international law.”
Catherine Ashton, the EU’s high representative for foreign and security policy, a particularly voluble critic of Israel’s expansion into the West Bank, which is illegal under international law, has taken the unusual step of delegating representation at Tuesday’s meeting to Erato Kozakou-Marcoullis, the Cypriot foreign minister.
As recently as 8 June, she issued a statement deploring Israeli prime minister Binyamin Netanyahu’s decision to build an additional 800 settlements in occupied territory – compensation for the 17 Israeli families the country’s high court had ordered to be removed from the Migron settlement.
“Settlement activity is detrimental to current peace efforts, including by the Quartet [the UN, EU, US and Russia], and puts those efforts at risk,” she said.
On 14 May, the EU’s 27 foreign ministers unanimously condemned Israel’s demolition of Palestinian homes, its continuing settlement expansion and the rise of settler violence against Palestinians – which the UN says has leapt by 150% in the past year, largely due to the impunity of Israeli perpetrators. EU officials argue that far from a package of rewards, Tuesday’s agreement constitutes part of an existing action plan to promote co-operation, in progress since 2000. But while all 60 agreements in the package may have been discussed previously, they are being made concrete for the first time this week. In its entirety, this is the most significant package offered to Israel since the upgrade in relations was frozen.
Among the most controversial is the addition of areas of co-operation in the Agreement on Conformity, Assessment and Acceptance of industrial products, or ACAA – a deal first agreed in principle two years ago. In this agreement, the EU formally accepts for the first time the authority of Israeli ministers over goods produced in West Bank settlements.
The package also promises to “further bilateral co-operation” between Israel and key EU agencies, including the EU’s Judicial Co-operation Unit and the European Police Office.
Paul Hirschson, a spokesman for the Israeli ministry of foreign affairs, admits the EU and Israel may have their differences, but, dismissed the idea of trade sanctions as nonsensical:
“Both sides would suffer terribly if we start throwing eggs at each other. With Greece and Spain imploding, it doesn’t make sense for the EU to do anything to damage trade with anyone at this point,” Hirschson said, pointing out that two-thirds of Israel’s imports are bought from EU member states.
“The upgrade process may be frozen but both parties are finding ways to increase cooperation when it suits them,” he added.