Occupied Jerusalem- On December 25 of this year, the Israeli Knesset approved, in preliminary reading, a law proposal authorizing the Director General of the Israeli Ministry of Education to refuse to employ teachers from Jerusalem and the Palestinian interior who hold an academic title from an institution subject to the control and supervision of the Palestinian Authority.
The law was proposed by Knesset member from the Likud Party, Amit Halevy, and others. During the vote, 40 members supported it and 9 members opposed it. The law’s proposers said that there has been an increase in recent years in the number of citizens and residents of Israel who receive their academic education in Palestinian Authority institutions and in the number of graduates of those institutions who join the educational system in Israel.
The Knesset website claimed that “studying in these institutions often includes anti-Semitic content and ideological indoctrination aimed at denying the existence of the State of Israel and seriously inciting against it.”
Therefore, “it is not appropriate for those who choose to learn these contents to work within public sector institutions in the State of Israel, especially allowing them to expose helpless children to the contents taught in Palestinian Authority institutions that incite against the State of Israel and foster terrorism.” “.
The Knesset ratifies a law prohibiting the employment of teachers who graduate from Palestinian universities
— SadaNews (@SadaNewsPS) December 26, 2024
Targeting lighthouses
President of Al-Quds University, Dr. Imad Abu Kishek, began his speech to Tel Aviv Tribune Net by saying that Palestinian universities are beacons of enlightenment and include the largest number of Palestinian elites, including researchers, thinkers, and scholars in various fields.
“Therefore, this decision comes to besiege universities and try to close them on the one hand, and to isolate the people of Jerusalem and the people of the occupied interior from them on the other hand, because it constitutes intellectual immunity for them, and the occupation wants to subjugate and control the Palestinian people,” according to the President of Al-Quds University.
He added that the right to education and choosing the institution in which a person wants to join is one of the most basic human rights, and this has nothing to do with politics, but the Israeli government’s insistence on isolating and weakening Palestinian academic institutions is clear that through it it wants to put pressure on the Palestinian people by targeting the most important institutions they have, which are universities. Which are considered centers for the elite and a basic building block in the Palestinian economy, and therefore this is one of the most dangerous racist decisions taken by Israel, according to Abu Kishek.
According to the university president, 55% of the 13,000 students at Al-Quds University are from Jerusalemites and the 48 regions, and the new law, if approved by the three readings, will have a major impact on the university that bears the name of the capital.
“They want to subject the Palestinians to a special intellectual path that is consistent with the agendas and plans of the Israeli government, and the new law proposal is linked to the Israelization of curricula in Jerusalem, besieging its schools, and ending their existence,” says the president of Al-Quds University.
racism
Although the new law proposal is limited to the Israeli Ministry of Education, the President of Al-Quds University expressed his fears that the legislation will affect other Israeli ministries, and thus 10 Palestinian universities in the West Bank will pay high prices while depriving Palestinians in Jerusalem and the interior from enrolling in certain specializations.
He explained, “Jerusalem students who graduate from the Colleges of Arts and Sciences at Al-Quds University were subject to academic completion in Israeli colleges in order to be allowed to teach in schools affiliated with the Israeli Ministry of Education, but the new legislation may deprive these students of enrolling in these two colleges.”
Regarding the new challenge, Abdul Qader Al-Husseini, Chairman of the Board of Directors of the Faisal Al-Husseini Foundation, said that these laws are extremely political and far from professionalism and rationality, and deepen and perpetuate the reality of racial discrimination in the system that governs the State of Israel.
On the other hand, the director of the institution specialized in the education sector in Jerusalem pointed out that “the new legislation has a significant impact on Jerusalemites and Palestinians who hold Israeli citizenship, a large number of whom study in Palestinian universities.”
Hence, these challenges must be confronted legally by taking all necessary legal measures regardless of the outcome, but it is important that there be a legal challenge to such decisions, according to Al-Husseini.
Target sector
The education sector is one of the sectors targeted by the Israeli five-year plan, which extends from 2024 to 2028, and bears the name “Reducing social and economic gaps and economic development of East Jerusalem” with Resolution No. 550.
The new five-year plan was allocated a budget of 3.2 billion shekels (about 844 million US dollars), and although the declared goal of the plan is to achieve greater integration of Jerusalemites into Israeli society and economy, the hidden goal is to penetrate the Jerusalemites and link them to the Israeli social, economic, and legal system, in order to subjugate, control, and control them. Their awareness, according to Jerusalemite experts.
The new plan allocates 800 million shekels to primary and secondary schools in Jerusalem, in order to “continue building on the achievements achieved within the framework of the previous five-year plan, with a focus on higher education and quality employment, and establishing a team to work on enhancing the quality of the education system in East Jerusalem in general, and expanding The formal education system in particular, by increasing the proportion of students who learn the Israeli curriculum and those who enroll in preparation programs for Israeli academies.
Those in charge of the plan are working to increase the number of students who graduate from schools with the Israeli matriculation system (Yozai Tawjihi), and to provide financial and educational incentives to raise the percentage of students qualified to obtain a high-quality high school diploma, with a focus on the Hebrew language for students and teachers.
The Israeli Ministry of Education allocated a budget of 300 million shekels (about 80 million dollars) to finance educational institutions in Jerusalem on the condition of teaching the Israeli curriculum, in order to prepare them to later enroll in Israeli colleges and universities.
