Like recent college graduates the world over, Annaliza Younan is proud of her achievement, graduating with honors from her university’s School of Business. Unlike some college grads still scanning the want ads, she’s fortunate to have found a good job immediately after graduation. But in other ways Younan, 22, is far from being the typical new graduate, just as she wasn’t a typical college student. That’s because Younan lives in Israel and attended Bethlehem University in the occupied Palestinian Territories. Younan, a native Palestinian, chose Bethlehem University because it is known for excellence, and she credits the Catholic university’s reputation for helping her get a job right after graduation. “I wanted to study at the best,” she told NCR in a telephone interview. Younan had a further reason for choosing Bethlehem University: her passion for her homeland. “I’m Palestinian, and I wanted to be at a Palestinian university.”

Like recent college graduates the world over, Annaliza Younan is proud of her achievement, graduating with honors from her university’s School of Business. Unlike some college grads still scanning the want ads, she’s fortunate to have found a good job immediately after graduation.
But in other ways Younan, 22, is far from being the typical new graduate, just as she wasn’t a typical college student. That’s because Younan lives in Israel and attended Bethlehem University in the occupied Palestinian Territories.

Younan, a native Palestinian, chose Bethlehem University because it is known for excellence, and she credits the Catholic university’s reputation for helping her get a job right after graduation. “I wanted to study at the best,” she told NCR in a telephone interview. Younan had a further reason for choosing Bethlehem University: her passion for her homeland. “I’m Palestinian, and I wanted to be at a Palestinian university.”

Over the next four years, she paid a high price for that choice.  Younan lives in Beit Safafa, a Jerusalem suburb about 2 miles from Bethlehem. Travel between Israel and the West Bank was never easy in the best of times, but Younan’s college years began right at the height of the second intifada. Curfews, road closures, interminable delays at checkpoints and even strip searches became a daily fact of life.
“Sometimes in the morning I would get depressed just thinking of trying to get to university,” she told NCR. “Going to school was really a nightmare.”
The trip from Beit Safafa to Bethlehem that took 10 minutes in the past now took between 45 minutes to an hour on a good day. Because the roads were closed and the students knew they’d never get through the Israeli-manned checkpoints on time to get to class, they often took illegal bypass roads, which brought the risk of becoming a sniper target or being detained by patrols of Israeli Defense Forces.
From the bypass road the students would transfer to a bus that had to go through a checkpoint to enter Bethlehem.
“It was so frightening, so degrading,” Younan said of the checkpoint stops. “Many times the soldiers would force us to have body searches, make us take off our clothes.” The strip searches never required full nudity, and female soldiers checked the women, Younan said. Still, the experience was always terrifying. “While the woman soldier was checking us and running a [security wand] over our bodies, the man soldier would be right there with a rifle pointed at our heads. We were shaking with fear.”
The routine at the Bethlehem checkpoint was also arbitrary. Sometimes the soldiers simply prohibited the bus from entering, even though the young people had student ID’s. At other times, Younan said, they’d make all the passengers get out of the bus and climb over mounds of rocks and rubble, forcing a detour that added another half hour or more onto the travel time.
Younan carries an Israeli passport because her maternal grandparents emigrated from Lebanon into modern-day Israel in 1948. Since Israel traces nationality through the mother’s side, the Younans are automatically Israeli citizens. But ironically that made it even more dangerous for her to attend a university in the Palestinian Territories. “It should have been OK, because we were students and had a student identity card,” she explained. “But under Israeli law if they catch anybody [in the West Bank] with an Israeli passport or Jerusalem identity card, you can be arrested or fined $1,000 a day.”
Annaliza Younan had another factor to deal with: Her father is Munib Younan, the well-known — and often outspoken — Lutheran bishop of Jerusalem.
Did being the bishop’s daughter give her any perks? “Not at all,” she said. “If anything it made things worse, because my father speaks very clearly and openly about the situation of the Palestinian people, and is very much an activist. And the Israelis know that, of course.”
On many occasions, she said, the Israeli soldiers would try to divide the students by religion, offering easier entry to Christians: “You Christians, you can go [through the checkpoint], you Muslims stay here.” But, she said, the Christian students refused to go on without their Muslim neighbors. “We are all human beings. We are all Palestinians.”
By the time they finally arrived at the Bethlehem University campus, students would be frustrated and exhausted, some so shaken by the events of the morning they found it almost impossible to concentrate. Others, especially male students, would never get through to the university at all on a given day.
In the face of all the difficulties, harassment and even danger, why bother? “Because I believe education is our only weapon as Palestinians, our best weapon,” Younan said.
“I refuse violence because it is against the people and against God, but I respect [Palestinians] who are in our struggle,” she added. “I don’t like that they use violence, but I understand it.”
Younan said that violence will not build a future for Palestine. Only educated people who can dialogue with the world can change the world, she said. “University was a relief for us — getting there was a nightmare and my life was often threatened, but the university was a relief. There we could get our education. We were persistent because we know this is the only way to a future of peace.”
Younan is working in Jerusalem for a new nongovernmental organization that publishes online news releases and magazines aiming to tell the objective story of what’s happening in Israel and Palestine.
Life is still very difficult. “But I have faith and I have hope,” she said. “Only God is eternal. One day, this situation will end — maybe not in my generation, but for my children, for my grandchildren. Because Israelis and Palestinians, we are hungry for peace.”