The Battle of Education in Jerusalem

Since the occupation of East Jerusalem in 1967, the Israeli state has taken many measures to erase the Arab and Palestinian history of the city in favor of an Israeli narrative. Such measures include changing curriculums to reinforce that narrative as well as a prohibition on the construction of new Arab schools. These changes have lead to the dropping out of about 10% of Arab students in the city.^[1]

Problems suffered in the Jerusalemite educational system

The Education sector is Jerusalem suffers from several problems–not all of them explicitly political including^[2]

• complexity of granting building licenses for new schools
• Inadequacy of infrastructure
• Intervention in the curriculum and the elimination of lessons or texts that discuss Palestinian identity, patriotism, and “the right of return”
• trial to replace the Palestinian curriculum with an Israeli one
• Prevent the entry of books from the West Bank to Jerusalem
• Target Arabic systematically: this was particularly proved by the Israeli purposeful distortion of the Arabic language in the curricula of the first and second grades in the occupied Palestinian territories since 1948 by including grammatical, morphological, linguistic, phonetic and lexical errors.^[3]
• Complicating the educational and administrative process by installing multiple supervisors
• Wage discrimination in favor of Israeli teachers at the expense of Palestinian ones.
• The refusal to recognize or credit Palestinian and Arab colleges and universities prevents many candidates with backgrounds in higher education from being hired from many jobs. .
• pushing many students to leave school in order to contribute to their family’s income According to a UN study issued in 2013, 82% of Jerusalem’s children live in families whose incomes exist below the poverty line.

Types of schools and their administrative subordination in Jerusalem:

One of the main problems that the educational system in Jerusalem is suffering from is the multiple supervisory parties in Jerusalem schools. Below are the different types of schools in Jerusalem and their administrative affiliations: ^[4]

• Endowment schools: administratively affiliated with the Palestinian Authority and operate under the umbrella of the Jordanian Endowments.
• Private schools: operate under churches, charities and individuals.
• Municipal schools: the Israeli Ma’arav schools and the municipality of occupation schools which are supported by and operate under the government of the occupation.
• UNRWA schools: affiliated with the UN Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA)
• Construction schools: run by individuals on behalf of the administration of Israeli knowledge ministry in the form of contracts to open schools in low-income environmental levels to fill in the shortage of schools which dedicates a policy of discrimination against the Palestinian population in the city. these schools are often unsafe, not subject to inspection or academic standards, and may even have replaced the original curriculum with the Israeli one entirely. One example of such schools is The Renaissance School which has 404 registered students and The Excellence school, which has 134.

The Apartheid wall and its effect on education in Jerusalem:

The Apartheid Wall, which is constructed on Palestinian land and isolates Jerusalem from the West Bank and Gaza Strip and splits its own Arab neighborhoods, towns and villages. This wall prevents many students and teachers that are residents in Jerusalem neighborhoods located outside the wall from entering the city and reaching their schools regularly.^[5]Note the following problems caused by the installation of the Apartheid Wall.^[6]

• The wall and its accompanying checkpoints delay the arrival of teachers and students to their schools, which affects not only achievement and attendance of students and complicates their timely retention of the material, but also discourages many students enough to eventually drop out.
• Psychological harm comes to these students and teachers as a result of continuous insult, inspection, and waiting for long hours and sometimes prevention of entry.
• Irregularity of teaching and the lack of permits offered to teachers from the West Bank delays and prevents them from reach their schools in Jerusalem.
• Preventing the “import” of books, furniture, supplies and food from the West Bank into Jerusalem.
• The imposition of fines and punitive measures on Jerusalemite Arab schools for the non-payment of taxes and under the pretext of unlicensed construction.