Education, Technology & Conflict: The Use & Perceptions of the Internet in Palestinian Education

The presence of Israeli military within Palestinian territories has had and continues to have negative effects on Palestinian education. School closures, curfews and checkpoints limit the ability of students and faculty to access education. Higher education has especially been targeted by these restrictions due to the role universities have played in the past as centers of resistance and political activism. Given the context of the occupation, the internet and new Web 2.0 technologies potentially have important educational and political roles to play in Palestinian higher education. E-learning with its promise of “anytime, anywhere” access to education could be a means for bypassing the educational and spatial restrictions imposed by the occupation. The internet also has potential to provide Palestinians with a non-occupied (cyber)space in which they may participate in political activism and electronic resistance (e-resistance). This dissertation investigates these potentialities through exploring how the internet is perceived and used within Palestinian higher education for educational and political purposes. A qualitative methodology was utilized, and student and faculty participants from Birzeit University located in the West Bank, were interviewed, as well as ministry officials from the Palestinian Ministry of Education and Higher Education (MoEHE).