Israeli and Palestinian scientists continue collaborations amid conflict

Throughout 15 months of brutal war in the Middle East, an unlikely cross-border scientific collaboration has endured. Ornithologists at Tel Aviv University in Israel have continued to meet online with their counterparts in Jordan, the Palestinian territories and European countries to study the potential for barn owls (Tyto alba) to reduce pesticide use in agriculture.

The project enlists the owls to devour crop-eating rodents instead of relying on farmers using toxic rodenticides to control populations. In January, shortly after a ceasefire was signed between Israel and Hamas in Gaza, researchers from 13 countries gathered in Greece. Their mission was both to discuss how to expand the use of barn owls for biological control and to promote the project as an example of research collaboration to promote peaceful coexistence.

The ceasefire’s first 42-day phase ended officially on 1 March. Talks between various parties have resumed in Doha, Qatar, but huge uncertainty hovers over what will happen next, including whether the ceasefire will endure. Despite opposition from many countries, Israel’s government is currently blocking food and fuel from entering Gaza. It has also stopped supplying electricity to Gaza’s main desalination plant, aiming to pressure Hamas into extending the ceasefire’s first phase.

“I’m not naive,” says Yossi Leshem, the project’s founder and an ornithologist at Tel Aviv University. “The ceasefire is very fragile. I hope [it] will continue permanently, but the situation is still very sensitive.”

Leshem and other Israeli scientists tell Nature that they are committed to continuing their research and pursuing collaborations. Among them is David Lehrer, director of the Center for Applied Environmental Diplomacy at the Arava Institute, based in Ketura in the south of Israel.

Lehrer is coordinating an effort with the Palestinian non-profit organization Damour for Community Development, which has offices in both Gaza and the West Bank. In January, 60 Palestinian, Jordanian and Israeli experts met in Athens to discuss how to solve the Middle East’s water, energy, food-security and overall environmental problems. Last week, the group announced further studies into seven project ideas. One is to create an artificial structure from the rubble of destroyed buildings. The structure would house solar energy or water desalination infrastructure.

“Seventy per cent of the buildings in Gaza and almost all infrastructure has been destroyed due to the war,” Lehrer says. As of now, “the rubble constitutes a major environmental and humanitarian threat, due to chemicals released as buildings were destroyed and the large amount of unexploded ordinance mixed in with the rubble”, he adds.

Any project to reconstitute it “will require major coordination between Israel and Palestine and can only be achieved if all sides, including the international community, are fully on board”.

Coexistence amid boycotts

After the 7 October 2023 Hamas terror attacks on Israel, the country conducted intense, deadly air strikes on Gaza’s populated areas for 15 months. For most of that time Israel was also at war with Hezbollah in Lebanon.

Some universities in Europe have suspended institution-level ties with universities in Israel. For example, the Council of Rectors of French-speaking universities of Belgium, said in a statement in January that it commits to suspending institutional collaborations with organizations, regardless of their origin, that repeatedly support or are directly involved in violations of international law and human rights.

In an open letter published last May, some 185 researchers and university administrators from Gaza wrote: “We extend our heartfelt appreciation to the national and international institutions that have stood in solidarity with us, providing support and assistance during these challenging times. However, we stress the importance of coordinating these efforts to effectively reopen Palestinian universities in Gaza.”

Neurobiologist Mouna Maroun, rector of the University of Haifa in Israel, opposes boycotts of Israel’s universities. “Academia is an opportunity to share knowledge and do research in complete freedom,” says Maroun who is an Arab–Israeli citizen. “People in the Middle East have common issues, more than factors that can differentiate and discriminate between us.”

Tamir Sheafer, rector of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, agrees. “Israeli academia is independent of the government,” he says. “At the Hebrew University, 20% of our students are Arab–Palestinian, including thousands of students from East Jerusalem. We maintained our coexistence here on campus during the whole war.”

In February, Israel’s Association of University Heads issued a report that recorded almost 500 complaints by Israeli researchers of boycotts by overseas institutions and professional academic associations. Researchers reported rejection of papers, disruption to lectures, avoidance of peer review, difficulties in obtaining funding and “a demand from Israelis to declare anti-Israeli intentions as a condition for continued participation in a conference”.

Some international academics are refusing peer-review requests from Israeli researchers because of the war, according to the Israel Science Foundation (ISF), the country’s main research-funding agency, although such refusals are relatively uncommon, says Tamar Jaffe-Mittwoch, the director-general of the ISF, based in Jerusalem.

These Gaza scientists are keeping research alive amid war, destruction and uncertainty

In 2024, the ISF approached around 22,000 mostly international researchers for 6,600 grant-reviewer positions. “We were very concerned,” says physicist Daniel Zajfman, who chairs the ISF’s academic board. “We thought, ‘no one wants to look at Israeli science’,” he adds. Of these, around 170 potential reviewers declined to review applications, explicitly citing political reasons — some doing so politely, says Zajfman, and some not so politely, says Jaffe-Mittwoch.

Scholarship goes on

Although military service in Israel is compulsory for most adult citizens, the war has not reduced the country’s scientific output, according to ISF data. In 2024, grant applications increased by 10% from the roughly 2,500 applications received annually in previous years. Zajfman thinks that this increase can partly be attributed to the determination of scientists to continue with their scholarship. “The feeling is we cannot allow these events, this war, to affect what we are doing now,” he says.