Contact: Birzeit Webmaster, Computer Centre
Birzeit University, P.O. Box 14, West Bank via Israel.
Tel: +972-2-298-2012, Fax: +972-2-295-7656
E-mail: webmaster@birzeit.edu
vers. 3, March 1999
Seed proposal to establish a summer Internet training program for young internationals, Palestinians from the Diaspora, and Palestinians from the West Bank and Gaza Strip at Birzeit University, with an emphasis on producing themed multimedia websites relating to issues in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict
Birzeit has a long history of international exchange. Since the early 1970s, the university, then a college, held international work camps for students from around the world, where they would work together with Palestinian students in the local community. A vibrant academic program for international students has similarly brought many internationals into a Palestinian environment to learn first hand about the culture, the Arabic language, and the political situation in the region.
Since 1996, Birzeit has launched a wide-ranging program to introduce Palestinians to the Internet and internationals to the Palestinian Internet. It's award-winning website at http://www.birzeit.edu/ is full of information about not only the university, but wider Palestinian society and situation. Birzeit is a leader in Palestinian Internet development.
The proposed International Summer Web Camp Program will follow the model of Birzeit's existing international programs, bringing young Palestinians and internationals raised outside the country, and young Palestinians born in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, together in the West Bank for a six-week course that includes communications skills and web design training, field work and research relating to aspects of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, the culmination of which will be the creation of a multimedia website to exhibit the results of their experience.
Birzeit University asks that potential funders consider supporting this proposal, a request for initial funds to promote and organise this information technology development and cultural exchange program, the first session of which will be held in June 1999.
Birzeit is an independent national Palestinian university, developing from a school established in 1924, and making the transition from college to university in the mid 1970s. Today, it is recognized as offering one of the best internationally-accredited higher education programs in the Middle East, with 4,000 students following undergraduate and graduate courses in arts, business, engineering, and sciences, with a series of around ten well-established policy research and community-outreach centers that offer environmental and occupational health science consultancy, adult literacy, media training, legal research, and others, to facilitate development of the emerging Palestinian state.
Birzeit University has held international work camps since the early 1970s. In the early 1980s, this program was formalized and Birzeit's International Summer Programs has seen around 1,000 young Palestinians and internationals come to the country for two weeks to assist in painting schools, cleaning up beaches, working in refugee camps and villages on agricultural and building projects, while developing an understanding of the wider Palestinian culture and surrounding Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
A well-established academic program for international students, the Palestine and Arabic Studies (PAS) program, has similarly brought many internationals into a Palestinian environment to learn the language first hand, and explore the culture and political situation in the region. Recognized as an internationally accredited program, the PAS program offers students two full semesters and one shorter summer semester in which students can pursue language courses in Modern Standard and Colloquial Arabic, and Middle Eastern history, political science, geography, literature, and other social sciences. The PAS website can be accessed at http://www.birzeit.edu/pas/.
Birzeit University itself is an international institution. With eighty percent of its faculty graduates of international institutions of higher learning, the university offer a full range of undergraduate Arts, Business, Engineering, and Science degrees, and is currently expanding into post-graduate degrees in all subject areas.
Birzeit University is a hub of Palestinian life, an independent, national institution that encapsulates the Palestinian dream of self-reliance. Its West Bank campus, 24 miles north of Jerusalem, is a vibrant environment for learning and the exchange of ideas. The proposed International Summer Web Camp Program represents Birzeit's latest step along the road of cooperative development, technological skills increase, and cultural exchange.
Birzeit University was founded on the principles of academic freedom, tolerance, pluralism, and free speech. A direct result of this foundation, Birzeit has always been recognized as an institution that promotes knowledge and debate, and has resisted interference from governments. In the decade before the Oslo accords were signed in Washington in 1993, Birzeit was punitively closed by direct Israeli military order fifteen times, the last and longest period totaling 51 months. With the coming of the Palestinian Authority, Birzeit has continued to maintain its independence.
Birzeit's enthusiastic appropriation of Internet technologies reflect both its heritage and the recognition that the Internet is a medium that offers a range of freedoms unavailable elsewhere. To Palestinians, the Internet represents an uncensored window to the rest of the world, a tool to end the international isolation of Palestinians, and a mechanism to build better relations with the scattered Palestinian Diaspora.
On 11 June 1996, Birzeit University launched its website. In that first month, 1,000 visitors came to the website. Today, over 24,000 visitors a month come to the website. This is due entirely to Birzeit's commitment to producing high quality Internet content, not only about the university academic programs and community, but about the wider Palestinian community.
At the point Birzeit University began its journey onto the Internet, there were practically no local skills or expertise in Web development and publishing. The university took upon itself a self-teaching process and developed the human resources necessary for building a national resource of information about Palestine and the skills needed to build the Palestinian conmmunity.
Birzeit began to assist other local organizations in the development of their websites and Internet strategy, including Palestinian Authority ministries, NGOs, other universities, and students and faculty of Birzeit itself. General training programs have been held at a variety of skill levels.
For three years, Birzeit University has maintained "The Complete Guide to Palestine's Websites" website, a highly popular guide to all the currently 178 local Palestinian websites, including full reviews and themed sections, such as "Key Peace Process Links". The Complete Guide can be found at http://www.birzeit.edu/links/.
In September 1996, as clashes swept across the West Bank and Gaza Strip that resulted in the deaths of 88 Palestinians and 14 Israelis, and injury of around 1,200 more Palestinians, then Birzeit webmaster Nigel Parry and a group of Birzeit staff and students gathered to produce the "On the ground in Ramallah: Reports from a town become battlefield" website which detailed the chronological development of the clashes across the country in text and photographs. Just as the Tienniman Square democracy movement in China first used the Internet to e-mail their version of developments around the world, the "On the Ground in Ramallah" website - http://www.birzeit.edu/palnews/war/ - was the first World Wide Web-based news reporting in media history offered by the people living through a military conflict.
At times the Israeli-Palestinian conflict intensified, it was noted that the frequency of hits on Palestinian news websites dramatically increased, as the mainly North American and European visitors sought other perspectives than those found in their national media. The "On the ground in Ramallah" website recorded 3,000 visitors in the ten-day period of the September 1996 clashes. "A Personal Diary of the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict", a popular alternative news project also launched by founding Birzeit webmaster Nigel Parry, logged 7,000 visitors in the month when Israel announced the building of the Har Homa settlement project on the Palestinian mountain of Abu Ghnaim.
International recognition of Birzeit's role in the Palestinian Internet community was acknowledged when in August 1997, Nigel Parry was invited to a United Nations symposium in Geneva to report on the development of the Palestinian Internet.
In September 1997, Adam Hanieh, Birzeit University's current webmaster, joined with Nigel Parry and a team of internationals and Palestinians from across the West Bank and Gaza Strip to produce the September 1996 Web Memorial - http://www.birzeit.edu/martyrs/september96/, a website that information about many of the 88 Palestinians killed during the September 1996 clashes. The idea was to build a resource that contained the life stories of those killed, as told by their friends and families. The commitment to portrayal of the humanity of the Palestinian people is a fundamental philosophy behind Birzeit's Web experience. At the same time, Birzeit believes that the skills involved in learning new technologies must be disseminated as widely as possible through the community. In September 1998, the Birzeit University Web Team, organized the first Internet Festival in Palestine - http://www.birzeit.edu/bzunews/1998/sep/9.html. The Festival was aimed at new students of the university, introducing them to basics of Internet use over three days. Over 400 students attended demonstrations and tutorials by university staff and other information technology professionals.
Also in September 1998, Birzeit launched the Our Voice project - http://www.birzeit.edu/ourvoice/ - which publishes research and writing by university staff and students. Our Voice is symbolic of another fundamental philosophy of Birzeit's work with the Web - appropriating the Internet as a platform to express the lives and hopes of Palestinians in their own words. Palestinian academic Edward Said once said of the existing media, that the Palestinians need the "permission to narrate". Birzeit continues to build platforms for Palestinians to address the world.
In October 1998, Birzeit became the first university in Palestine to launch an online radio station, Birzeit OutLoud - http://www.birzeit.edu/outloud/. OutLoud broadcasts weekly shows in English and Arabic, and can be "tuned into" by anyone with a computer and speakers, an Internet connection, and some free software. Hosted by two students, OutLoud is run with the cooperation of the Birzeit Media Center and Computer Center. Once again, this project utilizes cutting edge technology to enable Palestinians to speak directly with the Internet community.
The proposed International Summer Web Camp Program is the first Palestinian project to offer a regular means for international youth and Diaspora Palestinian youth to join with local Palestinian youth to share some of the Palestinian information technology experience and build new and interesting Palestinian resources on the Internet.
The International Summer Web Camp program will host around 20 international and local participants in equal numbers, men and women, for six weeks of training, lectures and introductory field trips; field research and data collection; and website construction in June 1999.
It is expected that international participants will already have an interest in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, that both international and local participants will already have both a high standard of media and communication skills, and a working knowledge of the Internet, and that local Palestinians will have an adequate fluency in English.
Participants will pay a fee to cover training, field trips, and consumable materials. Accomodation can be arranged through the university.
To ease the experience of arriving in a strange country for the international participants, orientation sessions already run concurrently with the Web Camp Program by the Palestine and Arabic Studies Program at the university will be available.
The program will be split into three sections of two weeks each:
Introductory lectures on key aspects of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and field trips to the towns and cities of the West Bank, Gaza Strip and inside Israel will also be given during this period, by Birzeit faculty and local NGOs.
Possible subject areas could include:
The most pressing needs of the International Summer Web Camp Program are the funding of two full time staff members to begin work on fund raising, promotion and administration of the program.
The staff members will undertake all the preparations at the university, planning the program in detail, organizing trainers, making contact with local NGOs, and undertaking local fund raising for equipment . We also require 2 laptop computers for these staff members.