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. 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. 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. 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. Israeli authorities have also weaponised budgetary allocations to coerce institutions, he added.
To counter this academic siege, Farraj detailed their reliance on the judiciary.
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