Ariel University Center of Samaria. Photo: Michael Jacobson/Wikimedia Commons.

JNS.org – Israel’s High Court of Justice on Tuesday rejected a petition filed by the Council of Presidents of Israeli Universities seeking to overturn a 2012 decision by the Council for Higher Education to upgrade the status of the Ariel University Center to that of a full-fledged university.

The decision was made upon the recommendation of former Defense Minister Ehud Barak and the review of Attorney-General Yehuda Weinstein, who ruled that there was no legal reason to prevent the move, thus declaring Ariel the first Israeli university beyond the Green Line, Israel Hayom reported.

The heads of Israel’s seven other universities attempted to torpedo the college’s accreditation upgrade, saying that Israel did not need another university and that upgrading Ariel would harm Israel’s higher-education system. Bar-Ilan University, which was originally part of the petition, later asked to have its name removed from it.

The court ruled that the Council for Higher Education in Judea and Samaria, which is independent from the Council for Higher Education, had satisfied the latter’s accreditation requirements, and therefore was not obligated by the recommendations of its zoning and budgets committee, which opposed the move.