Closure of Crossings Traps Students in Gaza

Khaled al-Mudallal expected to spend this autumn sitting in lectures and writing papers for his final year in business and management studies in Bradford, the town he has lived in for six years.

But when Mr Mudallal, 22, went home to visit his wife and family in Gaza this summer he found himself trapped. Within a few days of his return Hamas, the Islamist movement which won Palestinian elections last year, seized control of the Gaza Strip. Israel closed the crossings out of Gaza and six weeks ago declared the small stretch of land a "hostile entity".

He is one of 670 Palestinian students in Gaza with places on university courses abroad who are unable to return to their studies. Supported by an Israeli human rights group, Gisha, the students have brought a second petition to Israel's supreme court demanding the right to travel after a first petition was rejected. A response is expected today.

"This is my final year, it counts for 70% of my degree. It's the most important year of my life," said Mr Mudallal. "I feel I've been denied my right to education, my right of movement."

He moved to Bradford as a teenager to join his father, who was studying at the city's university. He went to school and then on to the university's school of management. He returned to Gaza last December to marry and came back again this summer to bring his wife, Dua'a, to Bradford for his final year.

He has a visa for Britain that runs until 2010. However, because the crossings were closed he had to cancel a one-year paid placement at a Bradford charity that was part of his course and is still paying £300 a month rent on his flat in the city. "We're living in limbo," he said.

The Israeli government has allowed a limited number of Palestinians to leave Gaza through the Erez border crossing, which leads into Israel, and from there on to Tel Aviv airport or overland into Jordan. In August, Israel began taking students out through Erez and driving them by bus to the Nitzana crossing, which leads into Egypt. However the bus ran only four times, allowing fewer than 550 people to leave, of whom about 80 were students. It has not run since early September.

Mr Mudallal's first petition to the supreme court, on September 17, was rejected because the court was told the bus service would resume. It did not. There are now 6,400 Palestinians waiting to leave Gaza and Mr Mudallal is number 4,845 on the waiting list.

Mark Regev, Israel's foreign ministry spokesman, said: "We are working to find an expeditious solution. We want them to go and study and help build a better future for the Palestinians."

Many others fear losing their university places. Mona Bkheet, 26, won a scholarship for a PhD on civil engineering at Southern Illinois University, in Carbondale. When she came home to Gaza for the summer, she too found herself trapped.

Hassan el-Nabih, 46, who won a place at Boston College, in Boston, Massachusetts, to study a PhD in linguistics under a US government scholarship for Palestinian university academics has a US visa that runs until June 2010 and a permit to cross through Israel from Gaza, but was twice turned back when trying to leave.