Given its location on the fault line of conflict, surrounded on three sides by Arab communities, the Hebrew University’s Mount Scopus campus is an extraordinary model of co-existence. It was also a relatively peaceful campus until July 31, when a Hamas bomb ripped the school’s cafeteria apart. The blast killed seven people and focussed world media attention on the school. Reporting on the tragedy, the Guardian declared the campus “an oasis of tolerance, with people from all different backgrounds studying together.” But for many of Hebrew University’s 4,600 Arab students, tolerance goes no farther than the margins of their term-papers.
According to Hebrew University students, Jews and Arabs tend not to interact on campus. “An atmosphere of co-existence and equality depends on dialogue and communication,” says an Arab graduate student who wished to have her name withheld. But, she says, “at Hebrew University, there is no communication.” Maydi Taha, an Arab mechina (a pre-undergraduate preparatory year program) student puts it more bluntly: “Simply, there is nothing between Arabs and Jews. There are not problems … but there are not relations either.”
Founded in 1925, Hebrew University was the first academic institution to conduct its education in modern Hebrew. According to Dean of Students Hannah Rahamimoff, the university has always admitted Arab students and today roughly 20 percent of the 23,000 full-time students at Hebrew University’s Mount Scopus campus is Arab. These Arab students—defined by the university as non-Jewish students of Middle Eastern descent whether they are Muslim, Christian, Druze, or Bedouin—come from all over Israel. A tiny fraction comes from outside the Green Line—the delineator between pre-1967 Israel and territory captured by Israel in the Six Day War. According to Muhammad Turk, a Palestinian graduate student who lives in a refugee camp near Jerusalem, “99 percent of the Arab students here are from inside the Green Line.”
Inside the classroom, Arab students stand on relatively equal ground with their Jewish peers. Most Arab students say they are generally treated the same as Jewish students. And Rahamimoff insists Hebrew University is academically fair: “Absolutely no discrimination exists between any student academically or administratively.” Moreover, she says, “to my knowledge we have never received any claim of academic discrimination.”
But since the outbreak of the most recent intifada in September of 2000, relations between Jewish and Arab students have gradually deteriorated. Warren Bass, senior fellow in Middle East Studies at the Council on Foreign Relations says, “during the Oslo decade, Arab and Jewish Israelis, particularly on campuses with large Arab populations, could actually hold a series of dialogues. These hopes [for dialogue] have been badly damaged since the outbreak of the intifada.”
Arab students confirm that Arab-Jewish relations have worsened over the past two years. At the same time, the intifada has consolidated the Arab student community, which used to self-segregate itself along ethnic and geographic lines. Turk, who has been studying at Hebrew University for the last five years and is one of the few Arab students from the Occupied Territories, believes unity among Arab students is a new phenomenon. “Before the outbreak of the intifada, I didn’t feel like I fit in. I didn’t feel like I was a brother with the other Arab students here…” he says. “Now we are unified. Now we understand that we experience the same suffering and the same discrimination.”
In the university’s courtyards and cafeterias the divide between Jews and Arabs is striking. Inside the student center, Arab students tend to congregate in one area while Jewish students gather in another. On warmer days, Arab students often cluster just outside the forum building while Jewish students sit further down the walkway and on the grassy knolls. “You almost never see Jewish and Arab students sitting together,” says Joharah Racha, a political science and sociology student from an Arab village near Un al-Fahem in the Galilee.
The Student Union, which is made up of a group of elected students from each academic unit, provides little student unity between Arabs and Jews. According to Rahamimoff, “An Arab student can run for the Student Union but they rarely do.” Instead, Arab students gravitate toward the Arab Student Union, which is not officially recognized by the university. “Arab students have customs that other students don’t have,” says Bassim Asfour, the head of the Arab Student Union. We try to preserve these customs and allow Arab students to celebrate them.”
Even in the university dormitories, where the opportunity for social interaction is greatest, students segregate themselves. Although the university does not have an official policy of segregation, Arab students are almost always housed with other Arabs. “People tend to stick to their own kind,” suggests Rahamimoff. “When students put in a housing request, they usually request to be with someone they know, or someone like them.” A Jewish economics student living in the dorms, who wished to remain anonymous, says that this self-segregation leads to a lack of contact. “Some opportunity for interaction happens when passing each other in the bathroom or cooking in the same kitchen, but these are not real relationships,” he says. “I don’t have any real relationships with Arabs.”
Arab students see disadvantage and discrimination as contributing to the separation. First, most university scholarships depend on, or give weighted consideration to army service—most Arab students do not serve in the army. English generally takes priority over Arabic in most academic circles even though both Arabic and English are official second languages. And most Israelis speak little Arabic. Moreover, many Arab students believe that the dominant Israeli culture implicitly considers their culture and language inferior. “Consider the name of the university,” says Shibli Abd Muslim, a first-year education student, “It is the Hebrew University, but I am not a Hebrew.”
A Druze student, who wished to have his name withheld, recounted his search for an apartment near the university: “I would hear about an available apartment and call. But when they heard my voice or my name, which sound Arab, they would tell me the apartment was already taken.” The Arab Student Union tries to provide a support system for such cases. “Many, many Arab students come to [the Arab Student Union] because they can’t find apartments that will take them,” says Asfour. “We have to house them temporarily with friends.”
Asked to give other specific examples of discrimination, most Arabs refer to harassment they face when travelling to and from the university. “Discrimination begins the moment I leave my house,” says Turk. By foot the university is only twenty minutes away … I am supposed to be [at the university] at noon. I leave before eight [in the morning]. Why? Because of the many barriers and checkpoints.” On one occasion, says Druze student Iyam Misharur, when she and a fellow Arab student tried to board a bus, her friend’s bag was emptied and she was detained for over an hour. “Simply for carrying books,” says Misharur.
In light of July’s terrorist attack, such incidents are likely to become more common on campus as well. Since the bombing, university security has increased six-fold. While Rahamimoff claims that “everyone is checked the same and required to show the same identification,” Arab students say that they must show numerous forms of identification and that they are often held up at the newly installed metal detectors at the university entrance.
Abd Muslim blames the media for fostering heightened suspicion and discrimination. “The day of the bombing, I saw a group of Jewish students laughin
g,” he says. “They were laughing at something unrelated to the bombing. Later, I saw a group of Arab students laughing. They were also just laughing because something was funny. But the media takes this and says Arab students were laughing at the bombing.”
Bass, from the Council on Foreign Relations, blames Hamas arguing that one of its goals in targeting the university was to increase the alienation of Arab students. He says, “for Hamas, one of the side benefits of attacking the university is that it makes life more difficult for Arab students and promotes anti-Arab sentiments from Jewish students.” \t
Regardless of its source, both Jewish and Arab students see mistrust contributing to separation and discrimination at the university. “Everyone at the university sort of agrees on certain rules of behavior but that doesn’t necessarily mean that all the thoughts and ideas that exist outside of the university don’t exist inside as well,” says Michael Ravvin, a history and political science student from Jerusalem. Rather, Jewish students are faced with “a dilemma between security and democracy. Without a doubt, Arabs present a certain threat that Jews do not; Jewish students are not going to blow up the university.” Victoria Blint, a graduate student in political science and sociology agrees: “I think since the bombing we look at Arab students with a sense of distrust because the bombing was an inside job—meaning it was carried out by an employee of the university. There is a natural inclination for collective responsibility however much we realize that this is unfair.”
Many Arab students fear even further deterioration in the already minimal relations between Jews and Arabs. The Arab graduate student who wished to remain anonymous says, “Before [the bombing] it was possible to talk and there were some relations. Now, afterwards, it is not comfortable and I am afraid that after the semester begins, student political units will come up with anti-Arab slogans and try to get us to leave the university.”
