Chinese university campus in Israel to halt enrollments
ISTANBUL (AA) – A Chinese university will suspend new student enrollments this autumn at its campus in Israel amid war on Gaza.
The University of Business and Economics (UIBE) is facing “difficulties posed” by Israel’s war on Gaza, the South China Morning Post reported.
“Our license requires us to have a substantial amount of faculty members from China, from UIBE-Beijing. And due to the war restrictions of travelling from China to Israel … we couldn’t fulfil the very basic requirement of (hosting) academics from China,” said Netanel Vaknin, vice-president of operations at UIBE-Israel.
UIBE runs its main campus in Beijing.
Vaknin added: “We are not closing, we are basically postponing now.”
This has been the only satellite campus of any Chinese university in Israel since 2021.
The enrollment suspension has also been caused by the fact that Chinese faculty have been unable to travel to Israel due to the ongoing war in Gaza, which has now entered its 11th month since October 7 of last year.
However, Vaknin said the suspension of new student enrollments at the Chinese university’s Israeli campus is “unrelated to political relations between Israel and China.”
Bilateral relations between Tel Aviv and Beijing have seen a rocky time since the war on Gaza began.
Beijing has emphasized a two-state solution, hosted Palestinian factions for unity talks, and also condemned the assassination of Hamas political bureau chief Ismail Haniyeh in Tehran, Iran’s capital.
While bilateral trade slowed last year, Vaknin, however, said: “These last 10 months actually emphasized a huge difference between our country’s values to China’s values.”
“People in Israel are changing their mind from [relations based on] shared values to shared interests,” he said.
Nearly 40,000 Palestinians have since been killed, mostly women and children, and over 92,000 others injured, according to local health authorities.
Over 10 months into the Israeli war, vast tracts of Gaza lie in ruins amid a crippling blockade of food, clean water, and medicine.
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