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Contents : FREEDOM One advantage of getting older- I am sure you will agree with me Menahem- is that the slices of reality one begins to see somehow become longer. Mme Chair Ladies and Gentlemen My first encounter with Menahem Yaari took place in 1981. The venue: my home -at the time on the Via Dolorosa literally clasping one end of the Ecce Homo arch in the Old City. The occasion: Military Order 854. The task: the report Professor Yaari was compiling with some of his colleagues on that Order and on Palestinian reactions to it. I was at the time the elected President of the Faculty Association at Birzeit University and in that capacity one of the outspoken critics of that Order. MO 854 like others preceding it all the way back to June of 1967 and others that followed it was issued by the Military Governor of the West Bank and Gaza territory that fell under Israel s rule and responsibility after the June war. Different orders proceeding from Israel s Ministry of Defense and ultimately deriving a legitimation cover from Israel s own Legislative Authority the Knesset dealt with different aspects of Palestinian life in this territory. Palestinians were literally subjects to these Orders. Number 854 in particular dealt with the burgeoning Higher Education activities of Palestinians living in this territory which had begun to develop after the June war. Drawing upon the previously existing Jordanian Law of Education of 1964 conceived at the time of its promulgation to apply to the schooling system under Government jurisdiction MO 854 simply declared citing the existence of a legal lacuna as justification that this law shall be extended so as to cover the newly-developed Higher Education activities of Palestinians including all matters relating to their institutions of higher learning. An innocent cursory look at 854 cannot possibly explain to an outside observer the magnitude of the resulting wave of unrest that followed in its wake sufficient at the time for some to call that wave of unrest a mini-intifada. Applied to universities 854 (surreptitiously drawing on the powers accorded to Government officials by the said Education law) meant theoretically at least that the Military Governor could henceforth hold the reins in and appropriate all matters relating to university life from accepting students to employing faculty to approving academic-curricula course descriptions or reading lists. In a word 854 meant nailing the lid down for good on what one normally understands by academic freedom. MO 854 was not an innocent measure taken by an education officer in the Military Government wishing to better organize Palestinian Higher Education. Palestinian Academic freedom translated into the Military Government s political Hebrew of the time meant the breeding ground of Palestinian nationalism . Suppressing that genre of breed or at least containing it -that is making sure it does not fully bloat into a potentially existential threat meaning at the time the demand for an independent nation-state- was regarded as a primary political imperative. Acting against Palestinian academic freedom by the Israeli Authority was therefore less an act against academic freedom as such as it was an integral part of an overall political effort to nip nationalist Palestinian sentiment in the area under its rule in the bud and to de- stroy the PLO itself the embodiment of this sentiment headquartered at the time in Lebanon. Thus Israel s first invasion of Lebanon in June of 1982. To complement that attempt at destroying the PLO and its perceived nationalist manifestations in the area under Israel s rule and as part of an attempt to fashion Palestinian destiny in accordance with Israel s containment designs Israeli policy-makers conceived at the time of nominally dismantling the Military Government itself and of replacing it by a softer-sounding Civil Administration . The plan the brainchild of Israeli academics working close to Minister Sharon was that this newlynamed creature would be able -in the wake of the destruction of the PLO and its local minions- to usher in a new era one in which a new breed of agreeable rural Palestinian leaders clean of that overly-nationalist ambition thought to be typically associated with city and intellectual elites exclusively would rise to the forefront of Palestinian politics and would manage to run an autonomy subsisting under the benign but remote rule and guidance of the Israeli Government. Appropriately the new Palestinian leadership would have the name of the village leagues . If in political jargon nationalist claims could only be accommodated through statehood so common wisdom had it autonomy would surely better suit the large ethnic minority newly ingested and now under Israel s rule. Little wonder then that a mini-intifada was provoked at the time against Israeli designs partly

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