“Honestly, I don’t care who runs the school. What matters is that my daughter is now in a school near home after being cut off from education due to the closure of the UNRWA school where they were studying.” This is what the father of one of the students from the Shu‘fat refugee camp recently told Jerusalem Story after he attended the opening of the Israeli municipal school in the camp with other residents.1

The opening of the school, whose premises were taken unilaterally by Israeli authorities from the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA), was celebrated despite an official Israeli presence with leaders from the municipality and police in attendance. This school, which for decades was affiliated with UNRWA and was part of an integrated educational and health complex serving Palestinian refugee children in the camp, was seized by the Israeli authorities in accordance with the November 2024 law passed by the Knesset. The law prohibits the UN agency from working in Jerusalem and allowed the Israeli government to seize its main headquarters, located in the Sheikh Jarrah neighborhood of the city and considered the largest in Palestine.

When the school in Shu‘fat was forcibly closed and seized last May, the Jerusalem Municipality illegally expropriated it as municipal property and allowed school officials to resume work with the remaining students but did nothing to improve the conditions of the school’s infrastructure.

The father, who asked not to be named, added that keeping the school in the same area was a positive step. He said that it was good for the future of the camp residents’ daughters and sons. However, when asked about the dramatic change in curriculum that came with the shift in oversight, he refused to comment on the fact that his daughter will be taught the Israeli curriculum rather than the Palestinian one.

The municipality has decided to use the Israeli curriculum starting at the primary level at this school in the Shu‘fat camp, which was previously not the case. In the past, Palestinian parents and students could choose between the Israeli and Palestinian curricula in the secondary level, and attend a school based on that choice.

The decision to unilaterally change the curriculum represents greater efforts to Israelize education in Jerusalem, a process that Israeli authorities have been attempting since illegally occupying East Jerusalem in 1967, though Palestinians have repeatedly resisted. When Israeli authorities attempted to impose the Israeli curriculum 59 years ago this September, parents refused to send their children to school, and school principals refused to work unless the Jordanian curriculum, which had been in use, was reinstated. Some dedicated Jerusalem figures, most notably the late Husni al-Ashhab, the former director of education in Jerusalem, even decided to open private schools dedicated solely to teaching the Jordanian curriculum (see Husni al-Ashhab). Students who attended those schools, which became known in Jerusalem as the Husni al-Ashhab Schools, were managed by him with the approval of the Jordanian government. These schools were initially under the auspices of the Jordanian Islamic Waqf Department and later became affiliated with the Palestinian Authority (PA).

The boycott and the opening of the Husni al-Ashhab Schools forced the Israeli authorities to back down from their decision to impose the Israeli curriculum and allow the teaching of the Jordanian curriculum, even in their own municipality-run schools.

Over time, however, circumstances have changed, the public figures concerned for the city’s well-being have disappeared, and the influence of the Husni al-Ashhab name faded from the public eye and discourse. Israel has managed to quietly infiltrate the vast majority of private and public schools in Jerusalem, which now openly teach the Israeli curriculum in exchange for financial support. According to officials from the Jerusalem Governorate, the financial incentives have led to a rapid acceleration of the use of the Israeli curriculum across educational levels in Palestinian schools in East Jerusalem.

The number of students studying under the Israeli curriculum has risen rapidly in recent years, from 12,727 in the 2020–21 academic year to 22,483 in 2024–25, and then 30,441 in 2025–26.2 As the new 2026–27 year begins, 44,448 Palestinian students in East Jerusalem (38 percent) will be learning using the Israeli curriculum; a dramatic change considering that figure was less than 10 percent 15 years ago.3

Ramadan Taha, chair of the Central Parents’ Committee of Silwan and Ras al-Amud Schools, told Jerusalem Story that he can only use the word “helplessness” to describe the situation they are living in: “Jerusalemites are living in a state of helplessness in the face of Israeli plans to impose the Israeli curriculum, because this means stripping away identity, cultural belonging, and Palestinian Arab civilization, while imposing a narrative that does not reflect our reality.”4

Hatem Abdel Qader, former minister of Jerusalem affairs for the PA and secretary-general of the Islamic-Christian Commission for the Support of Jerusalem and Holy Sites, told Jerusalem Story that imposing the curriculum on more than a third of Palestinian students in Jerusalem is revealing the occupation’s long-standing political attempts to invade the educational process in order to generate legitimacy for its control over East Jerusalem, which he said is not valid and has no legal or historical basis.5

Maarouf al-Rifai, the media advisor for the PA Jerusalem Governorate, told Jerusalem Story that imposing the Israeli curriculum comes amid a long history of pressure on Palestinian educational institutions in Jerusalem, which not only includes coercing school administrations and linking budgets to conditions related to the curriculum but also the seizure of two educational complexes belonging to UNRWA in the Shu‘fat refugee camp and Kufr ‘Aqab neighborhood.6

Israeli authorities plan on opening 14 secondary school classes, a primary school, and 5 kindergartens in place of the UNRWA complex in the Shu‘fat camp, and a secondary school for boys in Kufr ‘Aqab.7 Al-Rifai considers these measures part of an attempt to reshape the educational environment in Jerusalem to serve the occupation’s policies and mission. The municipality, in an attempt to justify its actions, has made statements to various media outlets claiming that opening schools in areas located beyond the Separation Wall will make it easier for students to reach schools without having to pass through checkpoints.

Al-Rifai said that targeting the curriculum not only affects the educational lives of Palestinian Jerusalemites but impacts political awareness, cultural memory, and national identity. The attempt to replace the Palestinian curriculum with the Israeli one marginalizes Palestinian history and narrative, particularly vis-à-vis the Nakba, prisoners, and Jerusalem.

Al-Rifai warned that the continuation of these policies threatens the future of Jerusalemites and targets the collective memory of a community that comprises nearly half of the city. He calls on parents, educational institutions, and the local community to strengthen the resilience of students and teachers by defending their right to education under their own Palestinian curriculum.

Abdul Rahman Saeed, 65, a former teacher in Jerusalem schools, told Jerusalem Story that even the Palestinian curriculum taught in some schools is not strong enough to counter the narrative imposed through the Israeli curriculum.8 He explains that the curriculum’s weaknesses stem from distortions forced upon Palestinians by the Israeli authorities. Specifically, Saeed said, the authorities have repeatedly confiscated the Palestinian textbooks and deleted much of the material before even allowing them into schools to be used.

Saeed first began teaching in the Husni al-Ashhab Schools when they were using the Jordanian curriculum, which produced students who were strong, cultured, and educated. He continued to work in Jerusalem schools when the PA was created, but the PA-provided curriculum was not as strong as the Jordanian one due to Israeli interventions and impositions. However, because the PA does not pay its teachers as well as the Jerusalem Municipality, Saeed decided to move to work in the Israeli municipal schools. There he discovered that the Israeli curriculum offered to Palestinian students was not intended to provide them with a solid and rigorous education, because it prevents teachers from performing their important role of helping to raise a generation of strong and educated Palestinians. Saeed understood and witnessed how the Israeli curriculum taught to Palestinian students aimed to keep them ignorant and ready to work in the Israeli labor market. Therefore, he decided to resign from the education sector and stay home. He reflects on the state of Palestinian students who are coming up through the grades studying the Israeli curriculum and says that it is reflected throughout the entire Palestinian society.

Nafiz Asila, a resident of the Old City and a well-known Palestinian Jerusalem activist, told Jerusalem Story that the condition of education in Jerusalem’s Old City was already precarious and tense, even before the start of the 2026–27 academic year.9 The few remaining Arab schools, which includes Waqf Department schools and some Christian schools, face incredible pressure and challenges. The challenges are not limited to overcrowding and a lack of resources (including nonrenewal of permits for teachers coming to work from the West Bank [see Private Christian Schools in Jerusalem Strike over “Humiliation Permits”]) but also extend to attempts to undermine students’ identity and their connection to their city’s history, thus weakening the role of education in preserving Jerusalem Palestinian identity.

School administrations at several private and Christian schools responded to this pressure by striking once again on September 1, 2026.10 The strike is evidence of the community’s resistance to Israeli efforts to destabilize the educational process in Jerusalem and further deepen the separation between East Jerusalem and the rest of the West Bank.

This is confirmed by Ahmad al-Safadi, an educational supervisor in the PA’s Directorate of Education in Jerusalem. He told Jerusalem Story, “We are witnessing a fiercely escalating campaign against everything Arab and Palestinian in Jerusalem, where the academic year began with a strike by private schools. Furthermore, the extreme Israeli far-right has stormed waqf and private schools, and banned the distribution of Palestinian textbooks, severely hindering the educational process. This is compounded by the barring of Palestinian university graduates from working in Jerusalem schools.”11

Al-Safadi adds that Israeli authorities were not content with just imposing the Israeli curriculum but also pursued any school that tried to teach the Palestinian curriculum and made the situation extremely difficult. Israeli authorities threatened the Waqf Department and other schools with severe penalties if they used Palestinian textbooks. In the past, Israeli police forces stormed an orphanage in the Old City and the Young Muslim Women’s Association in Wadi al-Joz under the pretext of searching for incitement materials, or Palestinian textbooks.

Therefore, these schools are in an impossible dilemma. They cannot provide Palestinian books to students, because bringing the books into the Old City requires police approval, and this will only happen after books pass the inspection of the Israeli censor, who removes large sections and distorts the books. Therefore, these schools must make do with using old books and searching for creative and innovative methods in order to continue to educate the Palestinian children of Jerusalem.

Tamer Khalil, 15, a student from the Old City, told Jerusalem Story: “I personally will not give up my right to preserve my Palestinian Arab identity, despite the Israeli temptations for students and their families to go to Israeli schools. My family refuses this as well, which is why I obtain the old books of classmates in the neighborhood who finished their classes before me in order to study them. We, a group of young people from the neighborhood, asked the parents and students not to destroy the books at the end of the school year and keep them in order to distribute them later to students at the beginning of the following school year, so we can study the Arab curriculum and not buy the new distorted books that the Israelis offer us.”12