REYKJAVIK (AFP) — US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice vowed Friday to look into a report that her department has scrapped grants to Palestinian scholars because they could not get Israeli approval to leave Gaza.
"We really have to be concerned about the future of Palestinians and the future Palestine," Rice told reporters during a visit in Iceland.
"And if you cannot engage young people and give them a complete horizon to their expectations and to their dreams, then I don't know that there would be any future for Palestine" or the people of the region, Rice said.
"It was a surprise to me and I am definitely going to look into it ... I'm a big supporter of Fulbrights for people in places that have been isolated from the international community, and we will see what we can do."
In a dispatch from Gaza, the New York Times and the International Herald Tribune reported Friday that the State Department had withdrawn all Fulbright Program grants to Palestinian students in Gaza.
It said the decision affected seven students who had been hoping to pursue advanced degrees at US academic institutions in the fall term.
The students were not given permission to leave Gaza under an Israeli policy aimed at isolating the Palestinian territory, which has been run by the Islamist extremist Hamas movement since it seized power there a year ago, it added.
In Washington, State Department spokesman Tom Casey said Friday: "We are trying to revisit this issue with the Israeli government," adding that "we certainly believe that we can come to a positive outcome in this with the Israelis".
He said the State Department's number three official, Under Secretary for Political Affairs William Burns, discussed the issue Friday with Israel's ambassador to Washington, Sallai Meridor.
Casey also confirmed that the seven Palestinian students -- an eighth student voluntarily withdrew for reasons not clarified by the State Department -- were informed that their study grants to the United States were withdrawn and would be offered to students from the West Bank.
Rice has been trying to broker a peace agreement following US-hosted talks in November that launched the first negotiations in seven years between Palestinian president Mahmud Abbas and Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert.
Abbas represents the moderate Fatah faction, which lost power to Hamas during bloody battles in Gaza and now is confined to the West Bank.
The White House weighed in on the matter by shifting responsibility for the incident to Hamas, which is labeled a terrorist organization by the United States.
"Obviously, we want people in the Middle East, students in the Middle East, to be able to come to America," White House spokeswoman Dana Perino said.
"But I think Hamas, obviously, has made it very difficult for students to be able to take advantage of the opportunities that present themselves, like the Fulbright scholarships," she added.
The Congressionally-funded Fulbright Program was founded in 1946 under legislation introduced by US Senator J. William Fulbright, and has counted more than 286,000 participants to date.
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