ABSTRACT
On February 3, 1983 Le Monde, France’s most influential newspaper, published an article by two doctors describing their visit to an Israeli prisoner of war camp in Lebanon. The doctors not only praise “Israel’s democratic gesture’* in allowing them to visit the camp without imposing any restrictions but also wistfully conclude they still await authorization to visit Israeli prisoners held in Syria. This difference of attitude and expectation has been shown again and again in the continual attacks on Israel’s purported infringements of academic freedom in the higher educational institutions of the occupied territories of the West Bank and Gaza, especially in the best known of them, Bir Zeit University. Much criticism has focused on the system by which a West Bank institution must obtain approval from Israeli authorities before hiring an instructor from outside the area. Such approval generally involves the granting of a one-year resident permit to the foreign instructor.
