Some boys and only one girl from my village attended al-Karmel high school. Not only did they have to walk for one hour to reach it, but many times on their way to school they were stopped by Israeli soldiers, they would start searching them and their bags, and sometimes they were even prohibited from continuing to school for arbitrary reasons and the soldiers would send them back home. Israeli soldiers used to erect several physical barriers such as flying checkpoints, which were set for long hours under the excuse of security reasons. In such cases, the students could not even argue with soldiers, but they would turn back and go home. I am sure that their behavior is based on their will to make us ignorant: they don’t want us to be educated. But to encounter soldiers is less dangerous and frightening than to experience violent attacks from settlers from the nearby settlements. The students attending al-Karmel high school have to face at least three to four such attacks per week in the morning while they are going to school or in the afternoon while returning home. At times the situation was so critical, that they could not attend school classes regularly. In such circumstances, students could not use the direct roads that lead them to al-Karmel, and had to go through a longer alternative route to get to school. Unfortunately, I am not the only girl who had to stop going to school after the sixth grade, most girls from my and neighboring villages had to drop out of school.” The Palestinian higher education system was developed as a single unified educational system and, prior to the imposition of travel restrictions, it was common for students to travel within the oPt during their studies. This was especially true for students from the Gaza Strip, who used to study at universities in the West Bank.211 Due to the permit regime and its associated travel restrictions, however, the Palestinian educational system is no longer able to function as a unified system, as it is not possible for students from the Gaza Strip to study in the West Bank or vice versa.212 The arbitrary denial of students wishing to study at a specific university is not only a serious restriction of the individual right of that student, but it also has a severely negative impact on the Palestinian community as a whole. Especially in the Gaza Strip, where travel restrictions lowered the number of students studying in the West Bank from approximately 1,000 in 1998, to close to zero today.213 211 Gisha – Legal Center for Freedom of Movement, “The Impact of the Separation between the Gaza Strip and the West Bank on Higher Education”, May 2010, page 1. Available at: http://www.gisha.org/ userfiles/file/safepassage/InfoSheets/English/students.pdf 212 Ibid. page 2 213 Gisha – Legal Center for Freedom of Movement, “The Impact of the Separation between the Gaza Strip and the West Bank on Higher Education”, May 2010, pages 1-3. Available at: http://www.gisha. org/userfiles/file/safepassage/InfoSheets/English/students.pdf 58