He was offered the chance of a lifetime to study at a renowned university in the United States. Instead, Issa Zananiri, a 25-year-old Palestinian from a village on the outskirts of Jerusalem, chose to pursue his graduate studies at Israel’s Institute of Technology (Technion) in Haifa.
It didn’t take long before he landed a job with the leading transportation planning company in Israel, Perlstein Galit Ltd. (PGL), which is designing Tel Aviv’s future railway system. “Even though I am a Palestinian, I was hired without hesitation,” he said. “My professor’s letter of recommendation was enough.”
Smiling, he explained how he was shocked that a Palestinian managed to land a top position making decisions regarding the future of Tel Aviv but “all they asked was whether I needed a work permit.”
Zananiri earned top grades in his undergraduate studies at Bir Zeit University in Palestinian-ruled Ramallah, opening a window of opportunity to work and study in Israel. He is currently completing his masters in transport engineering technology where Professor Yoram Shiftan, Zananiri’s Jewish mentor, has become his role model.
When he met Shiftan for the first time, Zananiri prepared beforehand by reading the professor’s thesis dedicated to his father murdered in a suicide attack in Egypt in 1990. “It was very unpleasant for me to appear in front of this man,” Zananiri recalled. “However, I found that he was not an enemy, but a professor who genuinely wanted to help me.”
The full article appears in the June 2007 issue of
Israel Today, so
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