Court tells Israel to review Gaza student travel

JERUSALEM (Reuters) - The Israeli Supreme Court on Monday criticised the government for preventing Palestinian students from leaving the Gaza Strip to study abroad and gave it two weeks to review its policy.

The court heard a petition filed by an Israeli human rights group on behalf of two Palestinian students whose requests to leave Gaza to study in Britain and Germany have so far been rejected by Israel.

On Friday, Washington pressed Israel to let seven Gaza Palestinians travel to the United States to study on coveted U.S. government Fulbright fellowships and Israel said it was working on the issue.

The U.S. said this week that it was reinstating its Fulbright grants to the seven Gazans after they had previously been withdrawn because of Israel's refusal to allow them out of the coastal enclave.

On Monday, the U.S. State Department said it had erred by not asking Israel sooner to help the seven Gazans leave.

Palestinian human rights groups in Gaza said hundreds of students would miss deadlines to pursue studies at universities abroad if Israel did not relax its travel restrictions soon.

The State Department said it approached the Israeli government on Friday, after The New York Times published a story about the case of the seven Fulbright students.

After the story was published, William Burns, the third-ranking U.S. diplomat, approached the Israeli government to seek its help in obtaining exit permits for the seven.

"Was there a faulty decision-making process internal to the State Department in this particular case? Yes, there was," State Department spokesman Sean McCormack told reporters.