Israeli Government Bill Aims to Deny Funding to Palestinian Schools in East Jerusalem

With Israelis screaming for an independent judiciary outside Israel’s parliament after the government pushed forward with its judicial overhaul plans, other draconian bills have been able to slip under the radar.

On July 14, 2023, the Knesset (Israeli parliament) Plenum approved Bill No. 3147/25 in its preliminary reading seeking to deny state funding to schools in East Jerusalem that teach the Palestinian Authority (PA) curriculum under the pretext that such material incites terrorism.1 The legislation now moves to the Knesset’s Education, Culture, and Sports Committee for further review and approval. (In the Israeli parliament, proposed bills undergo a multistep review process before becoming laws.)

“The real goal of the bill’s initiators,” Jerusalem-focused nonprofit Ir Amim wrote in a news release, “is to deny the right of East Jerusalem residents to study according to their own culture, heritage, and historical narrative and to impose the Israeli curriculum on them.”2

“This is a Knesset [parliament] bill. We are not part of the decisionmaking process [because Palestinian residents are not allowed to vote for the Israeli Knesset—Ed.]. This is antidemocratic,”3 said Muhammad Abdelqader al-Husseini, chairman of the board of directors of the Faisal Husseini Foundation, a Palestinian organization supporting East Jerusalem’s Palestinian education sector. “This decision is a wrong decision; it is an illegal decision, because the ones affected—the people and the schools of East Jerusalem—we are not part of the decision-making process. It will not help the city at all. It will only deepen the gap between Israelis and Palestinians,” he told Jerusalem Story.

Al-Husseini sees the implications of the bill as going far beyond funding. “The question is not how it will affect schools but rather how it will affect the city. Because the Israelis are trying to pass a decision that affects—not the schools or the learning process—they are targeting the identity of the [Palestinian] people.”

The bill states that the PA curriculum encourages terrorist activity, yet textbooks used in East Jerusalem schools are already censored by the municipality, which reprints the books before distributing them.4

“They [the Israeli authorities] censor,” al-Husseini explained. “But look at what they censor. They censor a picture of a student walking beside the [Separation] Wall. When they walk from their homes to their school, many students walk beside the wall. This is a fact.”

“Many of our classrooms—in every classroom there is a family with a prisoner. How do they read [discussing prisoners] as incitement? Discussing the life that we live—I don’t see it as incitement. I see it as discussing people’s lives,” al-Husseini told Jerusalem Story.

If passed, the legislation will exacerbate the profound neglect East Jerusalem schools already face. “The schools won’t be able to function,” Oshrat Maimon, Ir Amim’s director of policy and legal advocacy, told Jerusalem Story. “It’s a way to impose the Israeli curriculum on the students.”5

Al-Husseini notes that such imposition is not the rule for all populations in the country. “In Israel, they don’t impose a curriculum or give you by force a book to learn from. In Israel, you have to go and buy a book and you have a wide selection to choose from. As a teacher, and you have a wide choice, and you study the choice. The religious [Jews] have their own curriculum. With the Palestinians, while we have our own curriculum, they want to impose a different one.”

In Jerusalem, school type determines the curriculum and governing body. State secular and religious schools are run by the Jerusalem Education Administration within the municipality; Palestinian schools follow the PA curriculum and are managed by the Jerusalem Education Administration, and ultra-Orthodox schools are governed by the municipality’s orthodox educational division.6

Most of Palestinian students in East Jerusalem (about 85 percent) are taught the Palestinian curriculum and take the Palestinian matriculation exams (Tawjihi). Of those, about half study in official public schools of the municipality, which are 100 percent funded by the government, while the rest study in public schools that are considered “unofficial but recognized” or private schools. These latter schools, while heavily funded by the government, also receive some of their funding from other sources and are run by nonprofit organizations.7

If the bill passes, official public schools will lose all of their funding, and unofficial but recognized and private schools will lose 75 percent of their funding.8

Currently, Palestinian schools in East Jerusalem are already in a state of crisis due to a lack of funding, with a shortage of classrooms, lack of necessary equipment like computer and science labs, and soaring dropout rates. According to Ir Amim, East Jerusalem schools need more than 3,500 classrooms to accommodate the number of students. More than 1,600 students dropped out in 2022.9

The Jerusalem municipality has been criticized for its disproportionate allocation of funds—collecting nearly 30 percent in taxes from East Jerusalem Palestinians, yet delivering just above 5 percent back in services to the annexed area.10 East Jerusalem schools that educate Palestinian students receive less than half the funding of their West Jerusalem counterparts.11 According to al-Husseini, “They are not funding. They are mismanaging our money. They do not fund the education in Jerusalem. They take large amounts of taxes from us and they give us back just a little. And from that, only a small part of what they give us back from our taxes goes to education. And now they are putting conditions on how this money should be spent. They manage our money in a way that serves only their interest.”

In 2018, the Israeli government implemented Decision 3790. The five-year plan was packaged as benefiting East Jerusalem Palestinians, but its various facets have had the opposite impact. For example, a large portion of the decision’s education budget is set on transitioning schools to adopting the Israeli curriculum. According to Ir Amim, more than 43 percent of the education budget is conditioned on schools enacting this change.12

While the Knesset bill is not part of Decision 3790, Maimon noted, it is connected to the government’s goal of pushing the Israeli curriculum on Palestinian students.

The next installation of funding for Decision 3790 is currently frozen after Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich expressed opposition to some of the bill’s provisions.13

Al-Husseini explained that the pressure to adopt the Israeli curriculum has put East Jerusalem schools on edge.

“The security apparatus in Israel will put all of its effort to go from one small school to another, from one class to another, to see what’s in the hands of the students,” Al-Husseini said. “If there is the word Palestine someplace . . . the school will lose its license. This is terrorism, and this is terrifying the schools, the principals, the teachers, the students, and the parents.”

Ir Amim data indicates a gradual shift in East Jerusalem schools switching to the Israeli curriculum, with a little over 16 percent of schools having adopted it in the 2021–22 school year.14 But al-Husseini does not believe this number will become the norm.

“The majority will not surrender,” al-Husseini said. “The people will raise their voice and . . . either the Israelis retreat from their decision or stop this process or we go into a sort of clash.”