The R2E Participates in UK Parliament Panel on “Education as Resistance in Palestine”

The Right to Education Campaign at Birzeit University has recently participated in a panel discussion titled “Education as Resistance in Palestine”, held at Palace of Westminster and online.

The event was hosted by MP Steve Witherden in collaboration with the Socialist Educational Association, bringing together educators, organizers, and advocates to examine the realities facing Palestinian students and academic institutions under Israeli occupation.

Representing Birzeit University, Both Sundos Hammad, Coordinator of the Right to Education Campaign, and Bayan Haddad, Lecturer in the Department of English Language and Literature at Birzeit University.

Opening the discussion, Sundos Hammad highlighted the work of the Right to Education Campaign in documenting violations against Palestinian education and advocating for academic freedom. She emphasized the urgency of confronting scholasticide (the systematic destruction of educational infrastructure and access) and called for increased international accountability and solidarity with Palestinian students and institutions.

The discussion has also highlighted the systemic challenges imposed on Palestinian education, including movement restrictions, military incursions, and the targeting of students, faculty, and educational infrastructure. Hammad emphasized that, in this context, access to education is not only a fundamental human right but also a form of resistance.

In her remarks, Bayan Haddad reflected on education as a form of resistance and continuity under conditions of ongoing oppression. Drawing on both personal testimony and literary reference, including Virginia Woolf and Mrs Dalloway, she highlighted how Palestinians are denied even the most basic conditions for learning, with displacement, military incursions, and movement restrictions shaping everyday academic life.

Concluding, she called on policymakers to confront the political and moral distance that enables such conditions, and to recognize education as central to the possibility of a just and shared future.

The panel provided an important platform to connect struggles for educational justice across contexts and to strengthen international partnerships. It also reaffirmed the critical role of global academic and civil society networks in supporting the right to education in Palestine.

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