Palestinian student Berlanty Azzam speaks to the press on the Gaza Strip side of Erez crossing terminal with Israel following a court hearing with her lawyer and Israeli authorities in November 2009. Israel's top court on Wednesday upheld a decision under which Azzam was deported from Bethlehem to Gaza just two months before she was due to complete her bachelor's degree.09 December 2009

Israel top court upholds deportation of Palestinian to Gaza
Palestinian student Berlanty Azzam speaks to the press on the Gaza Strip side of Erez crossing terminal with Israel following a court hearing with her lawyer and Israeli authorities in November 2009. Israel's top court on Wednesday upheld a decision under which Azzam was deported from Bethlehem to Gaza just two months before she was due to complete her bachelor's degree.
Palestinian student Berlanty Azzam speaks to the press on the Gaza Strip side of Erez crossing terminal with Israel following a court hearing with her lawyer and Israeli authorities in November 2009. Israel's top court on Wednesday upheld a decision under which Azzam was deported from Bethlehem to Gaza just two months before she was due to complete her bachelor's degree.

AFP - Israel's top court on Wednesday upheld a decision under which a Palestinian student was deported from Bethlehem to Gaza just two months before she was due to complete her bachelor's degree.

"I am very disappointed, and I don't understand why Israel is preventing me from continuing my studies," said Berlanty Azzam, 22, who was a student at the Vatican-sponsored Bethlehem university before she was forcefully removed because her ID had a Gaza address.

"They don't claim that my return to Bethlehem University poses a security risk, and studying at a Palestinian university is my right and the right of every Palestinian student," she said.

Azzam was handcuffed and blindfolded when she was sent to Gaza on October 28, according to the Israeli human rights group Gisha which had petitioned the court to allow her to return.

The Supreme Court's ruling upheld the state's decision that Azzam may not return to the West Bank because she had lived there since 2005 without the necessary Israeli permit.

The state admitted that Azzam had received a permit to travel to the West Bank via Israel in 2005 but argued that she should have obtained a further authorisation to remain there, even though it admitted none existed at the time, according to Gisha.

Israel controls the Palestinian population registry and since 2000 has not permitted address changes from the Gaza Strip to the West Bank.

Azzam's lawyer, Yadin Elam said it is "absurd" and contrary to international law that a Palestinian should need an Israeli permit to live in the West Bank.

"I cannot imagine why the state of Israel is so insistent on preventing Palestinian young people, against whom it makes no security claims whatsoever, from accessing higher education," he said.

Like Azzam, an estimated 25,000 Palestinians could be forcibly sent to Gaza because their addresses are registered there, according to Gisha.

Residents of Gaza cannot leave the tiny enclave, except in some medical emergency cases, because of an embargo Israel imposed after the Islamist Hamas movement seized power there in 2007.