In the Latest Chapter of the Battle over Palestinian Education in Jerusalem, Authorities Search Children’s Book Bags

Mahmoud Ishaq, a resident of the Old City of Jerusalem, was appalled when he leafed through his daughter’s fourth-grade civic studies book. On the cover was the Palestinian Ministry of Education logo, but there was nothing Palestinian about the pictures and text (and in fact the ministry has denounced the book as a forgery; see samples below).

Ishaq says that references to Palestine and the Palestinian flag have been removed. Also missing are all references to Quranic verses, al-Aqsa Mosque, Palestinian prisoners and martyrs, and Jerusalem as the capital of Palestine.

When Ishaq finished paging through this state-approved “civics” textbook (published with the misleading Palestinian ministry logo) that has been forced on all Palestinian schools in Jerusalem instead of the regularly assigned textbook produced by the Palestinian National Authority, he decided to act.

Ishaq’s child attends al-Ibrahimiyya school, one of the oldest private schools in East Jerusalem. It was one of six schools that was recently warned that if they do not use what teachers and administrators generally refer to as the “fabricated” textbook, their school will be shut down by the Israeli Ministry of Education.

Upon learning of the schools’ dilemma, the parents of students at al-Ibrahimiyya school held a public meeting to assert that they will not allow their children to be taught using this textbook with its distortions of fact.

Tariq Akash, 44, is a father of three children and the head of the parents’ association for al-Eman schools, which include five schools in East Jerusalem. Those schools serve 3,000 students and along with al-Ibrahimiyya, they represent the major symbolic leading schools in East Jerusalem according to him.

Akash says he and other parents, mostly professionals, have been conducting a nonviolent struggle in this regard. He calls his group Hirak (movement). He says that their philosophy is clear. “We understand that schools are under tremendous pressure to toe the line with the Israeli ministry, which provides basic funding for schools.” Akash argues that the school tuition subsidy is not a gift, but it comes from the Palestinian taxes paid to the municipality and government with little return in services.

Schools including al-Eman, which the three Akash children attend, distributed to the students the Israeli-modified books and filmed the distribution of those books, but made it clear that they cannot control what students end up doing with those books. Palestinian parents then drove to Ramallah in their own cars and brought the Palestinian civics textbook for every student in grades 1 to 10. And this brought the Israeli Ministry of Education inspectors to Beit Hanina to literally open and check the students’ bags.

Akash says that the fight over the curriculum includes all books from first through tenth grades. Grades 11 and 12 are not included, because they take the Palestinian Tawjihi and therefore the Israelis allow the Palestinian-issued texts to be used.

School administrations have since decided to honor the parents’ preference and continue to teach using the Palestinian curriculum, despite the suspension of their licenses and the threat of closure.

What Palestinian parents in Jerusalem did in 2022 was not something new or unfamiliar. In the fall of 1967, three months after the 1967 War, when Israel tried to impose its curriculum, Palestinian parents in East Jerusalem took the same position on their children’s education and the textbooks used. In fact, the status of Arab public schools in East Jerusalem has been problematic ever since Israel occupied East Jerusalem. Virtually no country in the world has publicly accepted that occupation (which became a je jure annexation in 1980 with the passage of Basic Law: Jerusalem The Capital of Israel), and most of the world community still considers East Jerusalem to be occupied territory.

Shortly after Israel occupied the former Jordanian Jerusalem municipality and illegally expanded it and imposed its laws and jurisdiction on East Jerusalem, it tried to compel all schools to follow the Israeli curriculum. The idea did not go over well with Palestinian parents, who were worried about their children’s future. When the school year began in September 1967, few East Jerusalem students attended the city’s many public schools; instead, their parents enrolled them in private schools locally or sent them to Palestinian schools in the Ramallah and Bethlehem areas.

After two years, the Israeli government, realizing it could not impose its curriculum on the population, allowed Palestinian students to follow the Jordanian (and later, the Palestinian) curriculum leading up to the Tawjihi general secondary education certificate examination.

In addition to the public schools’ teaching based on the Jordanian, and later, Palestinian, curriculum, private secular and religious schools were popular for those who could afford the fees. Some of these are connected to specific churches and religious orders. Examples include Schmidt’s Girls College, an international German school for Christian and Muslim girls; St. George’s School (Madrasat al-Mutran), a British boys’ school run by the Anglican diocese of Jerusalem; the French Catholic boys’ school La Salle Collège des Frères; the Rosary Sisters’ Catholic high school for girls; and various other Catholic, Orthodox, Coptic, and other schools, as well as several schools operated by the Jordanian Islamic waqf.