[ New York Times] Ethan Bronner - Senior Israeli officials said Thursday that they would no longer stop all Palestinians who had foreign study grants from leaving Gaza and would look favorably upon their applications for exit permits. "We are going to let out students, but in limited numbers," one senior official said. "We're not talking about hundreds." Because Israel hopes in the future to have a neighbor that is less poor and better educated, encouraging some study grants abroad is very much in Israel's interest, Defense Ministry officials said. But the central policy of closing Gaza, after the Hamas takeover, remains in place. All Gazans with grants to study abroad will submit their names for clearance to the West Bank-based Palestinian Authority. Then the names will go to the Defense Ministry's coordinator of government activities in the territories, who will try to move their applications forward for exit permits.
2008-06-06 01:00:00Full ArticleBACK Visit the Daily Alert Archive