Britain's biggest union for college and university teachers plans to ask its 67,000 members to consider boycotting Israeli lecturers who do not publicly dissociate themselves from what it called Israel's "apartheid policies."

The language is from a resolution to be put before the National Association of Teachers in Further and Higher Education at its annual conference in Blackpool from May 27 to 29.

The move has reopened a fiery debate that seized another college union, the Association of University Teachers, last year. In response to appeals from 60 Palestinian organizations, the Association of University Teachers voted in April 2005 to boycott two Israeli universities, saying it would bar faculty members from Haifa and Bar-Ilan Universities from taking part in academic conferences or research with British colleagues.