Last update - 00:00 17/04/2007
Thousands of students protest Shochat Cmte. in Jerusalem
By Tamara Traubmann, Haaretz Correspondent
At least 2,000 students demonstrated Tuesday in front of the Prime Minister's Office in Jerusalem, in protest of the Shochat Committee's interim recommendations, including a plan to raise tuition fees.
The students have been on strike for the past week. High-school teacher unions and university faculty unions are also participating in the protest.
Students at the Seminar Hakibbutzim Teachers College in Tel Aviv are demonstrating in Jerusalem as well. The college, which does not have a student union or association - formed a group Sunday dedicated to the struggle for improving higher education. The members pledged "to fight for the right for higher education and against the principles of privatization that the Shochat Committee is trying to coerce the institution into adopting."
Police forces were beefed up in order to prevent the protest. Security forces delayed buses that were en route to the protest, and confiscated tires that were found in bus compartments.
National Student Union Chairman Itay Sonschein said that "For half a year we have been battling the scandal that the Prime Minister, Education Minister, and Finance Minister created. After we fought in the [Second] Lebanon War, we came to the Education Committee in the Knesset, and were told that they will not continue to decrease tuition, and that the budget cuts will not be returned because of a plump man who was once finance minister [Shochat] is now head of the committee and ruining the country."
Professor Yaron Ezrachi from the Department of Political Science at Hebrew University in Jerusalem, said that "higher education is a civil right, and in a proper country it should be given free of charge"