The group of Israeli, Jordanian and Palestinian scientists

Additional Reporting By IOL Cairo Staff

CALIFORNIA, December 16 (IslamOnline & News Agencies) – A group of Israeli, Palestinian and Jordanian scientists, who met at a scientific conference in the United States, are planning to organize a similar conference in the Middle East.

The six scientists met at the 14th Annual Frontiers of Science Symposium held at the National Academy of Sciences (NAS) in California and then two hours after the meeting started decided to explore the possibility of staging a Mideast version of this conference, reported the online Science Magazine. 

"Why can we do it in 2 hours, and our people are fighting on this for decades?" asked Israeli Ran Nathan, an environmental ecologist at Ben Gurion University of the Negev in Be'er Sheva, adding, "If we can bring together people who strongly hate each other, we think they'll see that they're human beings despite their terrible stories," reported the publication.

A Palestinian scientist, a public health specialist at Al-Quds University in occupied Jerusalem, Khuloud Jamal Khayyat-Dajani said: "Science is a common language, and there are no borders. We need to find the common language that can be understood during the hardest of times."

According to physicist Michael Greene of the Policy and Global Affairs division of NAS's National Research Council, the mission is "Seeds of Peace for scientists."

However, Greene admitted that to sell the idea of such a meeting will not be without problems in the region. The reason he cited was that "people don't understand what it's about."

"What it's about is bringing together young scientists who will be leaders in the next generation so they'll know one another better," he said, reported the magazine.

"Since 1993, NAS has helped sponsor meetings between scientific academies from Israel and its Arab neighbors to help fuel the peace process. The program – known as Science Academies and Councils of the Middle East – has faced some setbacks over the years.

"Some Arab countries, such as Saudi Arabia and Kuwait, declined from the start to send their scientists, and Egypt played an active role before suddenly canceling a 1995 meeting in Cairo," reported the Science Magazine.

The reasons the Egyptians didn't participate despite "a lot of effort to include them," according to Green are "hard to find out".

Sami Husein Mahmood, a physicist at Yarmouk University in Irbid, Jordan, said that such a gathering would provide "a great opportunity" to young Middle Eastern scientists, allowing them to meet their neighbors, win recognition for their work, and gain confidence, said the magazine.

However, according to the publication, besides selling the idea, the scientists have another sticky challenge: where to stage such a meeting.

All of the Arab scientists insisted that the gathering could not take place in the Middle East.

"In the beginning, it should be done in a neutral country," said Jihad Al-Sawair, an environmental scientist at the Royal Scientific Society in Amman, Jordan. "But in time, when things become clear and hopefully become better, maybe it will be done in the region," he said, said the magazine.

Another problem pointed out by the scientists was that there are disparities between Israeli scientists, who have a well-established and well-funded scientific culture, and Palestinian scientists, who have few institutions and little support, it added.

However, the scientific boycott for Israeli academics has taken momentum among Arab and Western scientists alike. 

On July 22, U.K. newspaper, the Guardian, said that the National Association of Teachers in Further and Higher Education (NATFHE), in the U.K.,  has called upon British universities to sever all their links with Israeli universities.

In addition, the Association of University Teachers (AUT) has  also called upon the European Union to stop funding of cultural and research links with Israel, the paper said.

On October 25, Israeli newspaper Ha'aretz reported that the British academic publisher St. Jerome Publishing has informed Bar-Ilan University that it will no longer sell books and periodicals to the school due to Israel's activities in the occupied territories.

In July, U.K. newspaper, the Telegraph, reported that Professor Mona Baker, the director of the center for translation and intercultural studies at the University of Manchester Institute of Science and Technology (UMIST), dismissed two Israeli academics from the boards of her two independently-owned journals after signing an academic boycott of Israeli institutions.

Speaking to IslamOnline, Sheikh Abdul-Majeed Subh, a prominent Azharite scholar, was asked whether or not it is permissible to hold a meeting with Israeli scientists to try to find a solution to the Palestinian issue?

"Since the Israelis have usurped the land of Palestinians and continue their aggressions and occupation, then this meeting has no meaning and significance," he said.

"In fact, it is a meeting between two parties, a strong and a weak one and the strong side refrains from giving up any of the rights of the oppressed side.

"I would like to formulate the situation in the following statement: ‘We failed to turn our legitimate right into a strength while they have turned their strength into a claimed right.’ I here would like to stress that the Palestinian issue is an Arab and Muslim affair not a Palestinian affair. This is what our enemy wants to achieve by falsely propagating that the issue a Palestinian/Israeli conflict.

"In conclusion, it is to be noted that the Israelis – during their history of negotiations – failed to fulfill any of their promises to Palestinians. Hence, such meetings are useless and are no more than a waste of time."