PROMINENT left-wing Israeli academic and author Tanya Reinhart plans to quit as emeritus professor at Tel Aviv University in protest against her Government's handling of the Palestinian issue.

Professor Reinhart, who will give a public lecture at the University of Melbourne tomorrow night, said Israel's walling of the large and prosperous West Bank was cutting off the Palestinian people from their lands and each other.

She said she could no longer live in Israel while it did what she said was the first attempt in history to imprison a nation with a wall that cut off villages from their farmland.

"This is not something I know from history, that you could control people by simply locking them in designated areas," Professor Reinhart said in Adelaide, where she delivered the Edward Said Memorial Lecture...