Occupied Jerusalem
- Article 50 of the Fourth Geneva Convention and Article 26 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights guarantee the right of peoples under occupation to obtain education consistent with their beliefs and to protect their culture and heritage from change or distortion.
However, this does not appear to be the case in the city of Jerusalem, as attempts to target education have not stopped since the occupation of the city in 1967 through various measures, including: working to change educational curricula, limiting school construction, and tempting secondary school students to absorb them into the labor market to encourage them to drop out of schools. .
What complicates matters in the educational sector in Jerusalem is that schools do not belong to a single administrative authority, but rather to two Palestinian and Israeli authorities, and thus there are many umbrellas under which schools fall, as well as educational curricula.
The morning assembly at the UNRWA Al-Quds Basic Girls School in the Mughrabi Gate neighborhood (Al-Jazeera)
What are the educational umbrellas in Jerusalem and what are the curricula taught in each of them?
Private schools:
administratively affiliated with churches, charities and individuals, and teach the authentic Palestinian curriculum.
Endowments Schools:
Administratively affiliated to the Palestinian Authority and operates under the umbrella of the Jordanian Endowments. The authentic Palestinian curriculum is taught in 52 schools affiliated to this umbrella inside and outside the separation wall.
UNRWA Schools:
Six schools in Jerusalem are affiliated with the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA), and about 1,800 students study the authentic Palestinian curriculum.
Municipal schools:
They are the Israeli schools of knowledge and the occupation municipality. They are administratively affiliated to the Israeli Ministry of Education. Some students study the distorted Palestinian curriculum, while others teach the Israeli curriculum from the first to the 12th grade.
Contracting schools:
run by individuals on behalf of the Israeli Knowledge Administration, and open their doors to students after a contract between individuals and the Ministry of Education to open schools at low school environmental levels to fill the deficit in classrooms.
Some students in these schools study the authentic Palestinian curriculum, while others - specifically in the schools called "Sakhnin" - study the Israeli curriculum.
How many Palestinian students are in Jerusalem schools?
The number of students at the primary, preparatory and secondary levels is about 98,428, according to the data of the Faisal Husseini Foundation, which was published in early July.
About 45,500 male and female students of them go to 146 schools affiliated with the Palestinian education umbrella (endowments, private schools, UNRWA schools), while the rest go to schools affiliated to the administration of the Israeli Ministry of Education.
Al Nizmiya School for Girls in Beit Hanina, Jerusalem. The picture shows that the school is a residential building (Al-Jazeera)
When did the Israeli attack on school curricula in Jerusalem begin and how did it develop?
The occupation seized public school buildings as soon as it occupied the city in 1967, and then began its attempts to change the Jordanian curriculum adopted in Jerusalem schools at the time.
In 1971, the occupation decided to impose the Israeli curriculum in the schools it controlled. Teachers and principals protested and went on strike. Education stopped in public school buildings and resumed in residential buildings. Jordanian curriculum at the time.
With the birth of the Palestinian curriculum in 2000, schools located east of Jerusalem began teaching it, even those affiliated with the occupation municipality and the Israeli Ministry of Education, but this did not last long after the Israeli Education Authority in 2011 reprinted school books after subjecting them to deletion and distortion.
Deleted from the books are the logo of the Palestinian Authority, the Palestinian flag, and all the lessons that talk about the Palestinian cause, adherence to the land, the right of return and prisoners, settlements, the immigration of settlers to Palestine, military checkpoints, the intifada, displaced villages, and considering Zionism a racist political movement.
The attack did not stop there, but intensified with the announcement of the implementation of the five-year plan in the city of Jerusalem, which extends over a period of 5 years from October 2018 to October 2023.
In 2011, the Israeli Education Authority reprinted school books after they were subject to deletion and distortion (Al-Jazeera)
What is the five-year plan and what is its impact on the education sector in Jerusalem?
It is an Israeli government plan announced in mid-2018, entitled “The Five-Year Plan: Reducing Social and Economic Gaps and Economic Development in East Jerusalem, 2018-2023,” with a budget estimated at 2.3 billion shekels (about $657 million).
The plan identified 6 sectors in which it will work: education and higher education, economy and trade, employment and welfare, transportation, improving the quality of life and services provided to the population, and planning and registering land.
The plan aims to link the Palestinians in Jerusalem with the Israeli system at its various social, economic and legal levels.
The education and higher education sector was allocated the largest share of the plan's budget at 445 million shekels (about 127 million US dollars).
Of this amount, about 200 million is allocated to encourage participation in Israeli education by increasing the number of students studying the Israeli curriculum in East Jerusalem.
The following figures - presented by the Israeli Ministry of Education during a session of the Education, Culture and Sports Committee in the Knesset late last year - show an increase in the percentage of Jerusalemite students enrolled in schools that apply the Israeli curriculum.
During the 2020-2021 school year, the percentage of Palestinian students studying the Israeli curriculum in schools affiliated with the Israeli Ministry of Education and the occupation municipality amounted to 15% of the total number of students from grades one to 12, while their percentage was 8% in the 2017-2018 academic year that preceded the activation of the plan five-year.
The percentage of students studying the Israeli curriculum in the first grade in the academic year 2017-2018 was approximately 9%, and increased to 16.5% in the academic year 2020-2021.
This percentage refers to students who started their educational journey from the first grade within the Israeli curriculum track, and will complete all years of their education until graduating from school within this track.
The percentage of students studying the Israeli curriculum in grade 12 in the 2017-2018 school year was approximately 15%, and in the 2020-2021 school year, it rose to 24% of the total number of students in the same class.
In recent years, the percentage of holders of the Israeli high school diploma (Bagrut) has increased, as East Jerusalem students who obtained it in 2017-2018 represented only 19%, and in the 2020-2021 school year it rose to 40%, according to data from the Israeli Ministry of Education.
Jerusalem students participated in a scientific research competition organized by the Faisal Husseini Foundation in Jerusalem two years ago (Al-Jazeera)
What is the main goal of the occupation government with regard to education in Jerusalem?
The Israeli Ministry of Education seeks to be the main reference for the educational system in Jerusalem, and one of the mechanisms to achieve this is to increase the number of classrooms in existing schools and build new schools to attract more students.
In this context, the occupation government opened 32 new schools belonging to it between 2014 and 2020 in East Jerusalem, according to data from the occupation municipality.
The official responsible for implementing the five-year plan in the field of education in East Jerusalem, Zion Regev, said during his participation in a symposium organized by the Israeli “Al-Quds Institute for Policy Research” that there is a wide transfer process from private schools - which receive funding from the Ministry of Education but do not directly belong to it - towards affiliated public schools. directly to the Ministry.
This transfer rate is estimated at about 60%, meaning that about 60% of the students who enroll in these newly built schools come from private schools, and this intersects with the goal of the occupation in transforming its schools into the largest share in terms of the number of students.
One of the methods adopted by the Israeli Ministry of Education in recent years to attract more Jerusalemite students is to build specialized schools specialized in teaching languages, music and arts, and others specialized in technological education.
Although the percentage of students studying the Israeli curriculum in Jerusalem schools is still less than 20% of the total number of students, the increase in numbers is rapid and noticeable in light of the huge budgets being pumped into this sector.
Overcrowding and narrowing of classrooms in Jerusalem schools threaten to transfer more students to schools opened by the Israeli Ministry of Education (Al-Jazeera)
How does the Palestinian Ministry of Education face the plans for the Israeliization of education in Jerusalem?
Director of the Jerusalem Affairs Unit in the Palestinian Ministry of Education, Dima Al-Samman, says that the ministry is working on the media and social levels with parents of Jerusalemite students to raise awareness of the dangers of their children enrolling in schools that implement the Israeli curriculum, and its consequences for their national identity, future and awareness.
Al-Samman added to Al-Jazeera Net, that the contradictions experienced by students in the schools affiliated with the occupation are very serious. For example, they know from their early childhood that Jerusalem is the capital of Palestine, but they are forced to write the name of the city itself in the answer box to the question What is the capital of Israel?
Because the student will not get the mark if he answers otherwise.
Although the occupation authorities closed the office of the Palestinian Education Directorate in the Old City of Jerusalem in late 2019, the ministry is determined to carry out its tasks with the 52 schools under its umbrella, according to Al-Samman.
Al-Samman confirmed that the shortage in the number of classrooms in Jerusalem schools has so far reached 1,500 rooms, which threatens to transfer more students to the schools opened by the Israeli Ministry of Education, with the failure to obtain licenses to build Palestinian schools in the occupied capital.