Arab students attending Tel Aviv University have demanded that the university bar students who also serve in elite units as IDF soldiers and officers from carrying long-barreled weapons on the university's campus.
"We will not agree to weapons in the university," they wrote in an a statement. "This year, the university opened its Erez program, in which eighty soldiers who are learning to be officers are studying. The campus is everyone's home - male and female students, Palestinians and Jews, who are forced to swallow the pill of cooperation between the university and the army; the soldiers wander around the university in their uniforms. However, it was clear to us, and we will insist on this, that the soldiers not walk around with weapons on the university campus."
"Unfortunately, today we discovered that this agreement was not honored and many long-barreled weapons wandered around between our feet... We will not agree - not to the harm to the safe space of the university, and not to the additional militarization of the area. We will oppose this - we will first turn to the university's management, in the hopes that the story will end there. The campus is everyone's home, is everyone's safe space, and we will keep it that way."
B'tsalmo Director General Shay Glick responded: "Weapons save lives. This is an audacious and infuriating demand. Every civilian or soldier has the right to wander around anywhere and at any time with a weapon and uniform. I demand that Tel Aviv University clarify in an unambiguous fashion that any civilian or student may wander around with a weapon and uniform, in the university and anywhere."
Tel Aviv University has not yet responded.