Three Palestinian students from universities in the Gaza strip
spoke at UCLA on Wednesday about their experiences living under
Israeli military occupation.
Hekmat Bessiso, Adel El-Ghoul and Mustafa Al-Kayali are student
activists against the Israeli occupation of the West Bank and
Gaza.
The event, which was put on by UCLA’s United Arab Society
with the help of the Department of Near Eastern Languages and
Cultures, drew about 25 students to Ackerman Union.
As members of a student and faculty organization called Faculty
for Israeli Palestinian Peace, the Palestinian students are
traveling through the United States and Europe to garner student
support for their campaign and to promote a Books Across Borders
program for Palestinian universities.
Bessiso, a third-year social development student at Al-Quds
extension university in Gaza, said in Gaza, the occupation reaches
beyond land and borders and limits the peoples’ dreams.
She said checkpoints are a controlling factor in people’s
lives, to such an extent that university faculty change their
schedules according to whether the checkpoint between the
universities in the north and Rafa in the south is open.
“Your life depends on that checkpoint,” Bessiso
said, adding that checkpoints cause long delays for ambulances, as
well as students and workers.
Many Israelis say the military checkpoints are necessary to
guard against terrorism and protect Israeli civilians.
She also called Gaza a “prison,” speaking of the
extreme difficulty of obtaining the necessary permit to travel to
the West Bank. Though the West Bank is only a two-hour drive from
the Gaza strip, she said she was unable to see a friend from
Ramallah until she bumped into her at a conference in Washington,
D.C.
El-Ghoul, who is working on his master’s degree in
management at the Aman University Extension in Gaza, said he was
arrested several times by Israeli authorities for being involved in
student activism.
Speaking through a translator, El-Ghoul said he was interrogated
and threatened with torture when he was arrested in 1985 at the age
of 13. He said the time he spent in prison from 1987 to 1994 was
for being part of a group that advocated non-violent resistance to
Israeli rule.
El-Ghoul also said because of the checkpoints, many Palestinian
workers rarely see their children. He said Palestinians who work in
Israel typically get up at 5 a.m. and return home at 10 p.m.
Faysal Saab, president of UAB and a second-year psychobiology
student at UCLA, said he hopes this event from the Palestinian
point of view will help broaden perspectives on campus about the
Middle East.
“I believe you can’t get a more honest truth than
students who have been living under occupation their whole
lives,” Saab said.
Dina Chehata, a second-year international relations and Near
Eastern languages and cultures student and the external vice
president of UAS, called the event a success.
“It is very rare for someone from an area so controversial
to come and voice their own opinions, rather than having us speak
on their behalf,” Chehata said.