The academic year in occupied East Jerusalem began on Tuesday with an open-ended strike by teachers at private and Christian schools after Israeli meddling in students’ curriculum.
All new first and seventh-grade classes at East Jerusalem’s Palestinian-majority municipal schools have been told to exclusively use the Israeli curriculum this year.
Entry permits for West Bank teachers to teach in East Jerusalem schools have also been blocked by Israel, according to Haaretz.
It means that one-in-three Palestinian students in occupied East Jerusalem, more than 45,000 in total, will be enrolled in the Israeli educational programme, a nearly fourfold increase over six years ago.
Jerusalem Governorate spokesman Marouf al-Rifai described the forced integration of Israeli curriculum into Palestinian schools as a cultural and educational crime.
“The adherence of Jerusalem’s people, teachers, and students to the Palestinian curriculum is not merely an adherence to a textbook, but rather a defense of memory, identity, history, and the right to determine the national narrative,” he said in a statement on Facebook.
Israeli forces recently seized educational compounds formerly operated by the UN agency for Palestinian refugees, UNRWA, in the Shu’fat refugee camp and Kafr Aqab, to be replaced with Israeli-administered facilities.
Hamas official Haroun Nasser el-Din issued a statement saying that “the school, the book, and awareness are basic pillars in the battle of Jerusalem”. East Jerusalem and the West Bank have been illegally occupied by Israel since 1967.
“The Palestinian identity in Jerusalem is deeper than to be erased by imposed curricula or the occupation’s procedures and its arrogant policies,” he added.
The permit crisis
Palestinian schools in East Jerusalem have already suffered a severe staffing shortage due to Israel effectively blocking teachers from the West Bank from reaching the city’s schools. The General Secretariat for Christian Educational Institutions in Jerusalem announced an indefinite strike in response to the crisis.
“We were surprised, unfortunately once again, by the non-renewal of entry permits for more than 70 teachers and employees from our educational, administrative, and support cadres, in a sudden manner and without prior warning, which hindered their access to their schools and directly affected their readiness for the opening of the school year,” the body said in a statement.
“The absence of this large number of cadres affects various aspects of school work, educational, administrative, and health, in addition to cleaning services and security and safety procedures, which makes it impossible to guarantee a safe and stable start for our students.”
Sylvia Amer, deputy director for academic and administrative affairs at College des Freres Jerusalem, said that the abrupt reversal of dozens of permits just 10 days before schools were due to open forced the suspension of classes.
“The sudden ban came after they had previously confirmed to us in June that all permits would be available for all members of our teaching and administrative staff and employees,” Amer said.
“If this reality continues, it will gradually lead to affecting the independence of schools and their educational and cultural identity”.
Systematic extortion tactics
The staffing crisis at East Jerusalem schools has been worsened by recent Israeli legislation targeting Palestinian schools.
A Knesset law passed earlier this year prohibits the employment of teachers holding academic degrees from Palestinian Authority institutions within the Israeli educational system.
This effectively targets the core of East Jerusalem’s teaching workforce, where approximately 60 percent of the 6,700 Arab educators hold Palestinian degrees, according to the Haaretz report.
Mike Bassam Farraj, general director of Greek Orthodox Patriarchate Schools, told Al Jazeera that the permit denials and legislative hurdles act as a systematic pressure campaign.
“It serves as a systematic pressure method practised on Christian schools in Jerusalem and private schools in general, aiming to reduce the numbers of employees and teachers coming from the West Bank,” Farraj noted.
Israeli authorities have also weaponised budgetary allocations to coerce institutions, he added.
“In reality, there are continuous financial temptations – so as not to use the word ‘blackmail’ – based on the equation: ‘Adopt the Israeli Bagrut curriculum and take whatever budgets you wish,’ where they then grant you much broader spaces and capabilities,” Farraj explained.
To counter this academic siege, Farraj detailed their reliance on the judiciary.
“As for some other professions, we are forced to engage in legal confrontations and relentless follow-ups before responsible and governmental authorities,” he explained.
“The matter often reaches – as in the specialisation of human medicine, for example – obtaining decisions from the Supreme Court to extract and prove the right of our graduates to obtain professional practice certificates according to their specialisations, whether in medicine or law or others.”
