Last update - 00:00 24/05/2007
University studies to resume Thursday as 41-day strike ends
By Tamara Traubmann, Haaretz Correspondent
University and college students will return to their studies Thursday ending a 41-day strike, one of the longest in the history of student protests in Israel.
Representatives of student organizations ended the strike after signing a controversial agreement with the government, which recognizes the students as a community whose consent the government should seek regarding tuition changes.
However, the agreement does not promise the students a veto over tuition hikes, and also requires that universities and colleges implement reforms outlined by the Shochat Committee before funds cut from their budgets are returned.
Late Monday night, student union heads voted at the Ono Academic College 23 to 17, with one abstention, to accept the agreement. They left the meeting to shouts from about 200 protesting students. Israel Student Union chairman Itai Shonshein left by a side entrance.
"An agreement signed without consulting the students is not a legitimate one," Yoav Goldering, a Tel Aviv University student, said.
The protesters, who wanted an open vote or for students to vote online, said it would have been better to end the strike without signing an agreement. Students opposed to the agreement are now organizing meetings in classrooms and on the campus lawns to discuss it.
According to Assaf Manor, a Tel Aviv University student, "Our goal is to foment the public discussion that the union leaders silenced when they hired security guards to keep protesters out of the meeting."
Student discussion groups began at Seminar Hakibbutzim Teachers College and spread to other campuses, fostering dialogue and increasing the sense of solidarity among the students.
Union leaders changed the venue of the meeting several times. On Sunday night, Shonshein took part in a discussion group at Derby College in Or Yehuda, where the vote was to have taken place. He told the group a referendum would be held on the agreement.
A group of union leaders was standing behind him. "We'll leave here one by one, so they don't notice," one was overhead saying. Because of the protests, the vote was then postponed to Monday.
Hagit Gur-Ziv, a lecturer at Seminar Hakibbutzim, wrote to her students that the most important lesson they learned from the strike was "that nothing is more frightening ... than a public that creates a dialogue and changes perceptions."