A West Bank University Builds Partnerships With Israeli Institutions

The Chronicle: 3/24/2006: A West Bank University Builds Partnerships With Israeli Institutions: "On a cold winter morning, Khuloud Khayyat Dajani, a Palestinian, stands in the freezing rain, juggling two bags of books, a stack of plastic folders, and an umbrella. The dean of public health at Al-Quds University, she is part of a long line of people attempting to pass through Kalandia, one of Israel's largest military checkpoints in the West Bank.
Ahead of her lies a maze of steel fences and crude gravel paths.The mud is ankle-deep in places, and the surrounding walls are topped with great whorls of barbed wire. Fortified guard boxes and surveillance towers are everywhere.
The checkpoint is part of Dr. Dajani's daily commute, a six-mile gantlet between her home in East Jerusalem and the Palestinian university where she teaches.
In a taxi, on the other side, Dr. Dajani takes a packet of moist towelettes out of her purse and meticulously wipes the spattered mud from her shoes, skirt, and coat.
'It's always like this at the checkpoints,' she says. 'But this was really an easy day. Sometimes you have materials for your lecture � transparencies and diskettes � and the soldiers break them. You tell them that it's for a lecture, but it doesn't matter. The Israelis say that this is all for the sake of security.'
Dr. Dajani runs down the litany of hardships Palestinian academics must endure: hours that could have been spent doing research instead wasted in lines at checkpoints; a ban on using Ben Gurion Airport, Israel's largest, to travel to conferences abroad; meetings and classes canceled at the last minute because an essential participant was denied permission to travel by the Israeli authorities."