Skip To Content
JEWISH. INDEPENDENT. NONPROFIT.
News

Deal Reached To End Israeli University Strike

Teaching is set to resume in Israeli universities on Sunday, after striking faculty reached a pay deal with the treasury.

The 4,700 tenured academics at the country’s seven public universities will see their salaries increase by 24.5% by 2010. The deal will end a 13-week strike that has shut down Israel’s universities.

The agreement was still being hashed out as as of today’s formal midday deadline, after which the universities were to prepare for closure on Sunday.

Now, however, things are set to go back to normal.

“The strike is over — we are very happy,” Ronnie Ellenblum, one of the seven academics who led the strike, told the Forward on Friday afternoon. “We will do whatever is needed to allow students to resume their scholarship as soon as possible.”

Pointing out that salaries had actually fallen in real terms by 35% over the last decade, he said: “We didn’t get all we struggled for, but this is the best contract in the last 10 to 15 years.”

For previous Forward coverage of the university strike, click here.

A message from our CEO & publisher Rachel Fishman Feddersen

I hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, I’d like to ask you to please support the Forward’s award-winning, nonprofit journalism during this critical time.

At a time when other newsrooms are closing or cutting back, the Forward has removed its paywall and invested additional resources to report on the ground from Israel and around the U.S. on the impact of the war, rising antisemitism and polarized discourse..

Readers like you make it all possible. Support our work by becoming a Forward Member and connect with our journalism and your community.

—  Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO

Join our mission to tell the Jewish story fully and fairly.

Republish This Story

Please read before republishing

We’re happy to make this story available to republish for free, unless it originated with JTA, Haaretz or another publication (as indicated on the article) and as long as you follow our guidelines. You must credit the Forward, retain our pixel and preserve our canonical link in Google search.  See our full guidelines for more information, and this guide for detail about canonical URLs.

To republish, copy the HTML by clicking on the yellow button to the right; it includes our tracking pixel, all paragraph styles and hyperlinks, the author byline and credit to the Forward. It does not include images; to avoid copyright violations, you must add them manually, following our guidelines. Please email us at [email protected], subject line “republish,” with any questions or to let us know what stories you’re picking up.

We don't support Internet Explorer

Please use Chrome, Safari, Firefox, or Edge to view this site.