US drops Gaza scholarships after Israel travel ban

[azurnoir]

Amal Ashour, 18, loves Shakespeare and American pop music. One of the brightest students in the Gaza Strip, she studied her senior year of high school in Minnesota through a U.S.-government funded program.

She had planned to study English literature this fall at a university in the West Bank through another U.S.-sponsored program, but just a month before school started, she was informed the scholarship was no longer available.

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Under Israeli pressure, U.S. officials have quietly canceled a two-year-old scholarship program for students in the Gaza Strip, undercutting one of the few American outreach programs to people in the Hamas-ruled territory. The program now faces an uncertain future, just two years after being launched with great fanfare by U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton during a visit to the region.

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After allowing the scholarship program to proceed in 2010, Israel this year refused to give permits for the Gaza students to travel to the West Bank. Hamas' rival, the Western-backed Palestinian Authority, governs the West Bank.

http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5jky0ukhuUjEMCKrbILkeikNDqlOg?docId=2886b2080d7f4efcb38dcc5d2f5bfdd7

[hrmjustin]

1. these kids have to suffer for politics.

[oberliner]

2. Did you even know this program existed?

Or is this your first mention of it - to note that it's been cancelled.

[azurnoir]

3. yes of course I knew about it why do ask?

didn't you?

eta this is of course different from the Rhodes scholarship awarded to students from Gaza that made the rounds a couple of years back

[oberliner]

4. First I've heard you mention it

Link to earlier references here?

[azurnoir]

5. so if I do not bring up everything I know I don't know it?

sounds like spin from some newscaster