Hopes from student twinning (translation of the Arabic below)

Meeting of the Al Quds University Student Twinning Group at Dar Assadaqa 4^th April 2017

Our university, Al Quds University, faces continuous violations by the Israeli army because it is close to the Separation Wall.  It is often attacked with tear gas, and the army invade it. Many students are arrested and prevented from continuing their studies at the University. It is in an area surrounded by military checkpoints which make movement to and from the University a problem.

 

(A British student being interviewed by a Palestinian student: 

part of a CADFA visit to Palestine last year)

We are meeting today to try to share our issues with British students, to allow us and you to learn more about each other’s daily lives, and from our side also to enable you to see the daily violations that the Israelis commit against the students from our university.

We all hope that by our next meeting, next week, we will hear also about your life as British students so we can improve the twinning links which have been going on now for years between London universities and the Al Quds University. We also hope that we can have activities and projects with the support of CADFA which will allow us to meet more and to work together.

In this meeting, we have a group of students from different faculties in Al Quds University. We believe that twinning with universities in the UK will give us a good opportunity and we hope to keep it going. For us, this link can be a good way to reach more people, so more people can share their personal stories and experiences under occupation.

Among us here in this meeting we have students who have spent time in Israeli jails away from their studies and were released recently and others who were wounded by Israeli army  bullets while they were in the course of their study. 

We all have hope that you can take our voice and our message as wide as you can among the students of your universities, and together with your colleagues you can create some pressure to protest against the Israeli occupation policies towards Palestinian students and  Palestinian people in general.