Study - except if you are from Gaza

Israel fosters education - and has done extremely well in, for example, having an IT industry said to rival, if not exceed, that in Silicon Valley in the US.

It is therefore astounding - and deserves condemnation - that Israel will not allow Gazans out of the territory to study abroad. The LA Times reports:

"Confined by Israel's blockade of the Gaza Strip, two Palestinian sisters who dreamed of postgraduate studies abroad got their chance in January when Gaza militants destroyed part of a wall along the Egyptian border.

Yasmin Abukwaik, 22, joined the thousands who fled Gaza before the breach was sealed and now studies X-ray technology in the United Arab Emirates. Her sister Hadeel, a 23-year-old software engineering instructor, took a risk and stayed so she could qualify for one of the few Fulbright grants for Gaza residents to study this fall in the United States.

The young women's divergent paths illustrate the increasingly slim odds for Gazans seeking Israeli clearance to study abroad. Few succeed. The rest, including hundreds who have earned scholarships in the West, are frustrated by Israel's policy of isolating the coastal enclave, which is run by the militant group Hamas.

On Thursday the elder Abukwaik sister was told that her gamble had not paid off. The U.S. State Department notified her and six other Palestinians that it was withdrawing their Fulbright grants because Israel had not given them permission to leave Gaza.

But the news took Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice by surprise, and Friday the State Department said it was reviewing the decision and urging Israel to allow the seven students to travel to the United States. The Fulbright is the U.S. government's leading program in international educational exchange."

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