Israel Revisits Limitations on Gaza Students

JERUSALEM, May 30 -- Israel said Friday that it would reconsider a policy that prevents Palestinian students from leaving the Gaza Strip to pursue their education overseas as the United States pushed for recipients of the prestigious Fulbright scholarship to be allowed out.

The U.S. effort came a day after seven Fulbright recipients were informed that their awards had been withdrawn and that they would have to apply again next year.

Since January, Israel has generally declined to let students leave Gaza under a broader policy of isolating the coastal strip following its takeover by the militant Islamist group Hamas last June. Diplomats and human rights groups say hundreds of students are being kept from leaving Gaza to participate in foreign scholarship programs, including 12 Fulbright winners.

On Friday, State Department spokesman Tom Casey said the United States would appeal to Israeli authorities to allow the students out.

Casey said it "ought to be falling off a log for them to be able to do this."

Casey made his comments after the cancellations were reported in the New York Times.

U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said that she had not known about the decision to withdraw the scholarships before Friday and that she was looking into it. "If you cannot engage young people and give complete horizons to their expectations and their dreams, I don't know that there would be any future for Palestine," she said.

Israel says it cannot open the border crossings when Hamas and other armed groups are lobbing rockets into southern Israel.

Israeli military spokesman Peter Lerner said Friday that Palestinians are allowed to leave Gaza for urgent medical care but that scholarships have not been considered a humanitarian necessity. But he said that could change.

"This is an issue that is going to be reviewed and reconsidered to see if we can't facilitate these kinds of needs," he said.

Lerner said about 70 students in Gaza are trying to get out. But Sari Bashi, director of the Israel-based human rights group Gisha, said the number is in the hundreds.

"This is a policy that is preventing Gaza's best and brightest from getting the education they need to build a better future," she said.

Osama Dawood, 25, a environmental engineering student, had hoped to use his Fulbright to learn techniques for improving water quality in Gaza.

"This has been really disappointing," he said. "The Israeli closures should be no reason to lose a year of education."

Staff writer Glenn Kessler in Washington contributed to this report.