As the new school year began in the Palestinian territories on August 29 1.4 million students poured into primary preparatory and secondary educational programs throughout the occupied Jerusalem the West Bank and the Gaza Strip amid ongoing Israeli occupation attempts to target students and their schools.
In occupied Jerusalem the Israeli occupation authority has taken extensive steps to eliminate any display of Palestinian identity in schools changing the curricula tampering with students’ access to knowledge intimidating them by hindering their access to school and issuing decision to prevent the entry of Palestinian textbooks into the occupied municipality. By banning Palestinian books the occupation authorities seek to impose the curriculum designed by the Ministry of Education in the occupation government in order to impose the Israeli narrative. 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 that matches their beliefs and to protect their culture and heritage from change or distortion. Occupation authorities bypass international law by forcibly controlling schools.
The head of the Al-Quds International Center Dr. Hassan Khater said that the education sector in the occupied Jerusalem is being targeted as the occupation has been systematically working for more than a decade and a half in order to strike at the schools. “In the beginning the occupation was working to promote drugs in the schools paying salaries to dealers to encourage students to take these poisons as part of targeting education.” He continued “Now they have informed us that they will ban the Palestinian books from entering the schools.”
In occupied West Bank students from villages near Israeli settlements are subject to another season of torment. Some schools like Al-Lubban al-Sharqiya school in Al-Khalil whose students are accustomed to morning attacks carried out by settlers or the occupation forces are often targeted during classes with occupation forces firing tear gas canisters at their schools. Adding further challenge the West Bank cities and towns are separated by several checkpoints that hinder the students’ easy access to their schools often subjecting students to cruelty and humiliation at the hands of soldiers. Additionally some Israeli settlers provocatively block roads in front of students intimidating and threatening them to not return.
With the start of the new school year families in remote areas expect to witness more tragic scenes for students who receive their education in “Schools of Resilience” the classrooms erected in rural areas threatened with demolition orders by the Israeli occupation. Two schools are already under demolition orders one in Al-Khalil governorate and the other serving the at-risk Masafer Yatta area where its residents are threatened with forced eviction and displacement.
In the besieged Gaza the picture of the Israeli barbarism is not different. The consequences of the long years of ongoing Israeli siege have aggregately impacted the education sector which now lacks vital educational materials including books specific papers and machines that are commonly used in the school laboratories and elsewhere. The long hours of cut electricity and the rising poverty rate hinders some families from buying new school uniforms and classrooms supplies for their children. Additionally families who live near the eastern separation fence with Israel send their children to school in fear of being shot by snipers by the occupation forces stationed in the area. As the Ministry of Education notes this year begins as the students have just survived another brutal assault which resulted in the massacre of 19 students dozens of injuries and partial destruction of 13 schools.
– Wafa Aludaini is a Gaza based journalist and activist. She contributed this article to the Palestinian Information Center.
