op-ed: Soft war waged on education in Jerusalem

The occupation government seeks to cauterize the national consciousness, strike the foundations of the Palestinian Jerusalemite identity, distort the national value in the mind of our holy students, and tamper with the basics of upbringing and the personality of the Jerusalemite student to distort their awareness and national identity to reach their goal of colonizing and occupying the minds of our students in Jerusalem, the occupied capital, through the policy of the Israeli government to impose an infamous law. Where the Israeli “Knesset” endorsed it by increasing oversight and restrictions on schools and teachers, preventing budgets for schools teaching the Palestinian curriculum and withdrawing permits, claiming that the Palestinian curriculum contained “incitement against the Zionist entity” and “anti-activities” against the Israeli occupation and not granting building and renovation permits to Palestinian schools to increase the number of classes. In it, in proportion to the natural population increase, and the refusal to recognize the Palestinian high school diploma, are all means through which the occupation achieves its plans.

 And it gave a grace period for granting a temporary license for a year, as a deadline for withdrawing “incitement” courses, in return for doubling the education budget in schools that teach Judaization courses by allocating 700 million shekels to support Israeli education, of which 206 million shekels is for extracurricular education. 45,367 students from East Jerusalem are studying in 138 schools with four official bodies that monitor the educational process in Jerusalem and demand their right within the international legitimacy of human rights and international law in the right to education.

The fierce attack on our Palestinian Jerusalemite Islamic and Christian identity by tightening restrictions on schools and curricula in light of the five-year plan recently approved by the Israeli government, “with a value of 2 billion shekels until 2023, to strengthen its sovereignty in East Jerusalem, is to urge Palestinian schools to move from the education curriculum Palestinian to the Israeli curriculum.

By replacing or deleting methodological and informational materials that consolidate the Palestinian Jerusalemite identity, and replacing them with other materials that promote the Zionist narrative and justify the occupation policy.

The war of israelization of education in Jerusalem has not started now, but what we are witnessing is the occupation authorities’ efforts to interfere in private and private schools and endowments, through conditional grants, which allow work permits for schools to be “compatible with the Israeli curriculum,” where approximately 20% of the total Educational institutions in East Jerusalem study the Israeli curriculum, compared to only 7% 5 years ago.

Among the efforts aimed at the Judaization and Israelization of education in Jerusalem is what was put in place by the so-called experts of the Ministry of Education of the Occupation, “the Bagrut Curriculum” to erase the Palestinian identity by following the principle of gradual administrative and financial penetration of the Arab, Islamic and Christian schools in Jerusalem.

This is an open invitation to official institutions to activate their decisions to support Jerusalem, to enable it to stand unified in the face of the occupation that devours our schools in Jerusalem, the capital.