The education of refugees in emergencies or protracted situations is a challenging task for many of the hosting countries, which often struggle to provide relief and ensure access to basic needs such as shelter, food and health. Access to education is often among the priorities of hosting countries, however it embodies within it particularities that deserve a key focus. Striking a balance between the need to integrate refugees into host countries whilst at the same time maintaining their specific culture, identity and language in the education process has often proven to be quite a difficult task and an issue that is often overlooked. Two main approaches to the education of refugees are often observed. The first is focused on their social, urban and economic integration, whilst the second considers them as temporary guests in a state of emergency who would return back shortly to their home countries. In the latter case, the education provisions often overlook the socio-economic outcomes and effects for the refugees on the job market. Lebanon adopts a rather paradoxical approach to education of the refugees. It insists on teaching only the Lebanese national curriculum as the only certified curriculum resulting in the acculturation of whole generations. At the same time, it applies various forms of restrictions on the integration of the refugees in the economic, social and political life. For more than 65 years, Palestinian refugees have been living in Lebanon in a ‘temporary’ state in over-crowded camps, deprived of basic rights such as the right to have a professional job while being forced to learn the Lebanese national curriculum. It has been argued that these restrictions have had a major effect on the fair provision and quality of education, an effect manifested in the increasing number of Palestinian students who are dropping out of school. This paper examines the paradoxical approach adopted in Lebanon in hosting the Palestinian refugees which is described as inclusive exclusion. This approach resulted in low education attainment for a large number of the student population. The same approach is currently being adopted almost 70 years later with the Syrian refugee population and Palestinians fleeing Syria. While the paper is focused on access and quality of education at UNRWA schools in Lebanon which hosts the majority of Palestinian refugees children in Lebanon, it compares this approach to the one being currently adopted for the Syrian refugees children in Lebanon.

Schooling is usually considered good for pupils. However, schooling does not automatically link with enlightenment, progress and liberty. Schools are authoritarian institutions, often engendering suffering, frustration and alienation. In the Occupied West Bank, Palestinian male students in PA schools endure various forms of physical, psychological, verbal, sexual and structural violence. For those students, the layers of suffering, alienation and frustration caused by schooling as a process and institution are exacerbated by the context of Israeli colonial occupation and its practices against Palestinians as subjugated population. Acts of violence against male students occur inside and around schools. Violence is inflicted on students within schools by other students, teaching and administrative staff, for example through bullying or corporal punishment, or resulting from Ministry of Education policies and practices. Inside, around and outside schools, students endure violence in all forms by the Occupation army and Jewish colonial settlers in addition to possible PA crackdown on students engaged in political activism. The forms of violence practiced against male students aim at the subjugation of their bodies [and minds], and the marginalization of their capabilities. Some students normalize violence, perceiving it to be part of school life, others consider the school a site of resistance where they can experiment with and experience their agency. This paper, based on in-depth ethnographic research, aims to answer the question: what are the sources, forms and implications of violence inflicted on male Palestinian students in PA schools in the Occupied West Bank? The available literature related to education in Palestine, in its majority, concentrates on issues of access, outcomes of education as a process, evaluations and assessments, and physical conditions of schools’ facilities and infrastructure. There is some recognition of violence in schools, however issues of discrimination against and alienation experienced by refugee students or those students from marginalized backgrounds are absent from the literature. Sexual violence is hardly ever mentioned in spite the fact that the topic is prominent in interviews with male students. This paper is an opportunity to amplify voices of male students who experience not only overt, but also hidden and overlooked violence throughout their schooling years. The paper unearths forms, sources and the long-term damaging and far-reaching consequences of violence endured by students. It challenges gender stereotypes whereby males in the Palestinian society are expected to endure violence as a norm, or seen as the source of violence.

When the Israeli occupation of the West Bank and Gaza began in 1967, a debate broke out in Israel’s political establishment about what the occupation should do for the welfare of Palestinians. Based off the statements Shlomo Gazit, Israel’s occupation was intended to create self-sufficient Palestinians whose quality of life improved. A more cynical interpretation is that Israel’s occupation was supposed to be benevolent in order to prevent an uprising in the Occupied Territories (OT). Although the apparatus has not changed much since it was implemented, the occupation has produced two intifadas as well as another one in the making. Israeli occupation forces implement separate legal systems, count calories going into the OT, and tightly control the economies of the occupied population. They also attack the educational institutions as a way to stop resistance. What effect does occupation have on the university education, research, and academic freedom of the occupied? Employing structured case studies of five Palestinian universities in the West Bank, this paper examines Israel’s violations of academic freedom in those spaces. The argument is supported by a theoretical exploration of settler colonialism and education before turning to a historicized account of Palestinian universities in the West Bank since the occupation began in 1967. As for my contribution, I plan to share the findings of my field research and interviews with academics and students at five different Palestinian universities (al-Quds, Bethlehem, BeirZeit, An-Najah, and Hebron). This research method - along with analysis of data collected from primary and secondary sources - will serve to demonstrate the current expression of academic freedom in the West Bank as well as strategies for resisting such violations. This paper also hopes to add a dynamic that explores how Israeli violations of Palestinian academic freedom have changed in the past two decades. Based on works such as Nick King, Neve Gordon, and others, this original research paper will combine the best practices of rigorous qualitative research methods and field research with a theoretically informed contribution about the causal relationship between occupation and quotidian violations of academic freedom.