Teaching Palestine on an Israeli University Campus

The word “occupation” is not heard in classrooms on the Hebrew University campus, at the heart of Palestinian East Jerusalem. The “war outside” is not spoken of. Israeli and Palestinian students unsettle this denial for the first time in a practice-led course on human rights in the reality around them. Readers join the students for a walking tour of the Palestinian neighborhoods surrounding the Mt. Scopus campus to explore the complex relations between education, civil engagement, and the occupation. A short walk from the campus of the best university in Israel and one that is outstanding by global standards takes us to the neighboring village of Issawiyye. Here readers learn with the students about the poor education in East Jerusalem, where most youth have no access to higher education. The tour continues to Sheikh Jarrah, a neighborhood bordering the campus, where, after four decades of legal procedures, the Israeli courts authorized the police to evict Palestinian families from their homes so that Jewish settlers could occupy them. The tour then takes the students and readers to the abandoned village of Lifta. Here, in the magnificent historical village, Israeli and Palestinian students debate the 1948 Nakba and their own denial. Back into the classroom on campus, when the past and present are discussed and the pain of others is acknowledged, Palestinian and Israeli students who engage with one another for the first time can share hope.