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Years of painstaking effort to boost scientific collaboration in the Middle East have been battered — but not yet destroyed — by the latest conflict in the region, researchers say.

War conditions in the region, supply shortages and restrictions on travel by Palestinian scientists have paralysed collaboration, and the escalation of conflict has polarized the views of researchers in both camps.

Nonetheless, many researchers are convinced that any let-up in the conflict may allow for a rapid revival in collaboration between Israeli and Arab scholars. There are also signs that the current crisis will galvanize international interest in promoting such collaboration.

In the optimism that followed the signing of the 1993 Oslo peace agreement, science emerged as one of the few areas where Arabs and Israelis could cooperate on common goals in a non-political setting. In this way, it could serve as a bridge for dialogue and mutual understanding (see Nature 375, 717–732; 1995).

But now, with the peace process in tatters, collaboration has been hit hard. Official scientific organizations in the region are under attack for their conspicuous public silence on the issues that matter most to researchers on both sides. Many observers argue that these organizations need to take a more courageous public stand if impetus is to be regained.

Palestinian scientists cite travel restrictions imposed by Israel as a major impediment to collaboration. These have become steadily stricter since the start of the second Palestinian uprising, or intifada, in September 2000. And since the occupation of the West Bank, movement for Palestinian researchers and students there has become almost impossible.

“The upper levels of Israeli universities were pretty much unwilling to use their political clout in pushing for freedom of movement,” says Paul Scham, a researcher at the Harry S. Truman Research Institute for the Advancement of Peace at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and the author of a study on Israeli/Arab research cooperation.

“Israeli scientists tend to distinguish between support for academic cooperation and ending frontier closures, which they consider a security matter. But Palestinians consider greater freedom of movement a prerequisite to more normal relations with Israeli academics,” says Scham.

Israeli researchers, meanwhile, complain privately that their Palestinian colleagues have said nothing in public about the suicide bombings that provoked the occupation of the West Bank.

As Israeli tanks withdrew from the West Bank earlier this month, tensions between the Palestinian and Israeli science communities heightened further. Palestinian officials and Israeli peace activists claimed that damage done during the occupation had weakened the fledgling Palestinian research and education infrastructure.

The Palestine Academy of Science and Technology in Ramallah, for example, was damaged when Israeli troops used explosives to blast open doors before searching the building, says Imad Khatib, director general of the academy. Furniture was smashed, and files and office equipment were scattered on the floor, he adds.

Al Quds University claims that Israeli soldiers badly damaged laboratories and other buildings at its campuses in El Bireh and Ramallah. The university has asked the Israeli government and the international community to send fact-finding missions and to help rebuild its infrastructure. It has also pleaded for US$675,000 of emergency aid, without which it says it will be unable to pay its 700 staff and may face closure.

Israeli officials were unavailable to comment on the specific allegations as Nature went to press. But the Israeli army has said it is taking allegations of vandalism seriously and will investigate them fully. The extent of the damage and the circumstances in which it was inflicted remain unclear. “It has been difficult to isolate and concentrate on specific aspects of the military operation,” says Eva Illouz, a peace activist and researcher in sociology and anthropology at the Hebrew University. “News of the destruction of the research facilities went largely unnoticed.”

Palestinian scientific leaders accuse the Israeli scientific community of being oblivious to their plight. Khatib, for example, complains that Israeli scientific leaders are “indifferent” to the damage at the Palestine Academy. Illouz counters that Israeli scientists are “disturbed” by reports of the destruction, but admits that there has been no public outcry because attitudes have hardened between Arab and Israeli scientists following the second intifada.

Dudy Tzfati, a geneticist at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and one of the founders of the Alliance of Middle Eastern Scientists and Physicians, a body that is committed to promoting peace, nonetheless remains optimistic about the future. He predicts that the mutual trust created by contacts among scientists will endure, and that the international scientific community should renew its support for such cooperation.

Similarly, Nachum Finger, rector of Ben Gurion University, predicts that, on any sign of a return to normality, “the universities, the scholars, will be back to lead the rapprochement with the Palestinians”.