Students yesterday rejected the compromise proposal made by representatives of Prime Minister Ehud Olmert and said they will continue to strike at institutions of higher learning.

Student leaders had expressed cautious optimism on Tuesday on whether a compromise could be reached to end the strike that began just after Pesach. However, after receiving the final draft of the deal now on offer, they said the differences were "very big" between the understandings reached at meetings and the document.

	Advertisement

"We went to the negotiations with our known demands: restoring budgets, the right to veto the recommendations of the Shochat Committee [calling for higher tuition fees] and restoring the Winograd framework for lowering tuition fees," said Itai Barda, the head of the student union.

According to the students, their negotiations with officials such as Oved Yehezkel, representing the prime minister, resulted in an agreement to restore about NIS 1 billion cut from higher education budgets since 2000, and this would not be linked to the reforms proposed by the Shochat Committee.

The Israel Students Union, which represents some of the colleges, has also decided to reject the latest offer. A similar proposal was made to the students of the teaching colleges.

The National Students Union has not yet announced a decision on the prime minister's offer. It has said, however, that the strike would continue as would the "struggle for rescuing higher education ... until its goals are achieved."

The Prime Minister's Bureau did not comment on the situation.

"Following long negotiations, the prime minister's representatives put forth a number of proposals for a solution," student union head Barda added. "We asked them in writing in order to evaluate their legal standing and present them to the students for agreement. Unfortunately, what was promised is not reflected in the draft. We do not understand what the government's intention is, but it seems that its gestures lack the genuine will to solve the crisis."

Barda said the students' efforts would now concentrate on the Knesset to try to secure a majority for the "Students' Rights" bill proposed by MK Silvan Shalom (Likud) and MK Alex Miller (Yisrael Beiteinu). The bill aims to anchor tuition fees in legislation.

Meanwhile, protests continued unabated yesterday. In the morning, students broke into a meeting of the Meridor Committee, which is deliberating tuition fees as part of the Shochat Committee's broader tasks.