“There will be no civil authority that teaches its children to eliminate the State of Israel, and there cannot be an authority that pays the salaries of the families of the killers.”
This is how Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu spoke in a recent press conference in which he directly accused the Palestinian curricula, describing them as “terrorist curricula that fuel hatred of Israel.”
Israel is discussing with its allies with more skepticism the issue of the Palestinian Authority’s ability to take over the reins of managing the Gaza Strip after the war ends in its favor, as it hopes.
Israel has never stopped targeting the Palestinian curriculum. Rather, it has harnessed its energies and efforts to that end. It has deliberately imposed the Israeli curriculum in Jerusalem schools, and has repeatedly presented a set of temptations to urge Palestinian schools to adopt this curriculum. The matter did not stop there, but rather Israel interfered in the contents of the Palestinian curriculum. The Palestinian curriculum through a continuous process of deletion, distortion, and the creation of a narrative that denies the Palestinians the status of a people.
The Palestinian curriculum from an Israeli perspective
Politicians and theorists in Israel are well aware of the importance of curricula and textbooks in refining societal awareness. Curricula often constitute a starting point for political and ideological conflicts between countries or even within a single state. Israel sees in the Palestinian curriculum a dangerous factor in prolonging the life of the conflict, and an impetus for evoking the historical depth of the people’s struggle. The Palestinians and their efforts to get rid of the occupation, and their legitimate right to establish their independent state.
The danger of maintaining the Palestinian curriculum from Israel’s point of view is represented by its ability to form real links between national concepts and the Palestinian entity. This is also related to the role of the curriculum in preserving the cultural and societal heritage as a national identity and value.
Targeting the Palestinian curriculum comes at the heart of Israel’s five-year plan (2023-2028) drawn up by the Occupation Finance Minister, Bezalel Smotrich, to Israelize and Judaize Jerusalem with a financial allocation of 3 billion and 200 million ($889 million) shekels. Here, the writer and specialist in Jerusalem affairs, Professor Rasem Obeidat, states that Israel has allocated 800 million shekels ($222 million) to Israeliize the educational process alone, equivalent to 20% of the total budget of the plan, which comes as an extension of a plan that preceded it during the period 2018-2023 and did not achieve its goal of Israeliizing 90% of the educational process in Jerusalem (1).
This is an explicit confirmation of the centrality of the issue of the Palestinian curriculum in the plan of the occupying state, as it is an essential element in the front of awareness and collective memory of the Palestinian people, and in its Israelization it penetrates and melts the Palestinian national culture.
A Jerusalemite trade union struggle facing normalization and Israelization
Since the arrival of the Israeli extremist right, led by National Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir, to power, the scope of targeting elements of the Palestinian educational process has expanded to include extracurricular activities, as the extremist government sought to incorporate aspects of normalization into extracurricular activities in Jerusalem schools, as it included a ceremony held by the Horizon School in Beit Hanina danced to a Hebrew song, and a graduation ceremony at Al-Wardiya School included raising the occupation flag on the sidelines of a theatrical performance presented by a group of female students.
The Union of Parents of Jerusalemite Students rejected what it described as occupation practices aimed at raising awareness and harming the Palestinian national interest.
The Union confirmed its condemnation of this dangerous trend through several statements it issued, and also held the church religious authority at the Rosary School responsible. In light of this, the Jerusalemite Student Parents Union demanded the dismissal of Father Ibrahim Faltas and the resignation of Principal Lucy from the administration of Al-Wardia School.
The Union of Parents of Jerusalemite Students stands as a strong barrier in the face of the planned practices carried out by the occupation against students and educational staff in Jerusalem. The Union is counting on the families and guardians to take a serious and genuine stance to prevent these plans aimed at emptying the city of Jerusalem of its Palestinian residents. Earlier in 2023, the Union of Parents of Jerusalemite Students implemented union steps to express its position rejecting the occupation municipality’s decision to merge the Al-Omariya and Al-Mawlawiyah schools, and transferring the students of Al-Qadisiyah School to them in preparation for controlling it and transferring it to the settlers.
The occupation is making great efforts to fragment and exclude this union body, especially after the union confirmed its intention to appoint a team of lawyers and legal advisors against the backdrop of the occupation’s continued efforts to transform Al-Qadisiyah School (Khalil Al-Sakakini) into an Israeli museum and remove this school from the list of educational institutions in Jerusalem forever.
In addition to the huge expenditures on the Israeliization of curricula, the occupation government resorted to exploiting the multiple supervisory authorities in educational institutions in Jerusalem, and closed the office of the Palestinian Education Directorate in Jerusalem in order to end aspects of the administrative role of the Palestinian Authority on the land of Jerusalem. This is consistent with what the institutions of the occupying state declared in mid-February 2024 about their intention to end the work of the United Nations Relief and Works Organization for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA) in Jerusalem, so that Israel remains the sole supervisory and supervisory authority over schools and educational institutions in Jerusalem.
The Union of Parents of Jerusalemite Students has become alone in the face of these regressive measures aimed at dispelling the Arab and Islamic identity in the city and creating a reality consistent with marketing the theory of occupation.
Jerusalem city schools and the curriculum they adopt
Jerusalem city schools are subjected to continuous attacks targeting primarily the curricular content they adopt. In the year 2023, the schools of the city of Jerusalem witnessed the most violent attack carried out by the occupation authorities for administrative and technical supervisory reasons, as the Israeli Ministry of Education and the occupation municipality crews carried out raids on a group of schools, during which students’ bags were searched in search of Palestinian curriculum books, while Al-Aqsa school students were prevented from entering the gates of the city of Jerusalem. The Blessed Mosque on the grounds that their bags contain Palestinian educational curricula. On the other hand, Israel does not stop offering all kinds of temptations to schools to implement what it calls the modified Palestinian curriculum.
Schools in Jerusalem fall into 5 categories:
- Firstly: Endowments schools These schools are subject to the Directorate of Education in Jerusalem as a supervisory body, operate within the framework of the Palestinian Ministry of Education and adhere to the Palestinian curriculum.
- secondly: Private and private schoolsThese are schools affiliated with churches, charitable societies, or private and private schools (affiliated with individuals). Schools adhere to Palestinian educational programs and the Palestinian curriculum, although most of them operate under Israeli pressure because they receive monthly Israeli allocations.
- Third: Maaref and municipal schoolsThese are schools that are completely and directly managed by the Israeli Encyclopedia and the occupation municipality and are subject to the application of the distorted Palestinian curricula, and part of them apply the Israeli curricula.
- Fourth: Semi-knowledge schools (Contracting) These are licensed schools, meaning they are recognized but unofficial, and they are also called contracting schools. Because its administration cooperates with the Israeli authorities and adheres to its instructions in full, to open classes in residential buildings, in exchange for allocations it receives from the occupation municipality.
- Fifth: Agency schoolsThese are schools that operate under the management of the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Refugees, and are committed to the Palestinian educational system and the Palestinian curriculum. (2)
Scenes from the original curricular content and its distorted counterpart
We review below some of the distorted curricula (3), in which the title “Jerusalem is the City of Peace” was replaced with “The City of Jerusalem is the capital of my homeland of Palestine,” “Jerusalem is the capital of the State of Israel” with “Jerusalem is the capital of the State of Palestine,” and Tiberias: a Jewish town Old as “Tiberias: an ancient Palestinian town.” Through this, the Israeli establishment aims to separate Jerusalem from its Palestinian identity and replace the idea that it is a multi-national and multi-ethnic city.
In the mathematics textbook for the seventh grade (4), the map of Europe, which shows the temperature differences between the countries of the European continent, was replaced with the map of historical Palestine.
Israel is not content with directly distorting the Palestinian curricular content, especially the curricula used in Jerusalem schools, but rather continues its pressure on the Palestinian Authority through several international donor institutions. Despite the ongoing reviews conducted by the Palestinian Authority on the curricula, donor institutions remain biased towards the Israeli approach.
We notice in this example taken from the seventh grade textbook, (Part 1, 2017 edition, p. 57), (6) which mentions the “naqifa” as one of the popular tools that Palestinians used to defend their areas of residence and property from the attacks of the occupation forces during the intifada, so that it was modified This text is in the 2020 edition, with another text that only mentions the “Nakifa” as a heritage tool that has nothing to do with the Intifada, but is used for playing and hunting birds.
Finally, we must emphasize the importance of exposing the plans of the occupation and its institutions against the educational process in general and the narrative fraud with regard to curricular content, especially in the schools of the city of Jerusalem.
It also highlights the need to point out the fact that protecting the Palestinian curriculum is a collective responsibility in which the right to education is taken away, and then the national responsibility is borne by transmitting the narrative of grandparents and fathers to children and grandchildren (7). It is not the responsibility of the ruling authority that may maneuver according to its political vision and immediate interests.
Sources and references
(1) Aseel Jundi, “The Five-Year Plan 2024-2028: Continuation of Israelization Projects and Forced Integration of Jerusalemites into the Israeli Institutional System,” “Al-Quds Al-Bousala,” 2/5/2024.
(2) Palestinian News and Information Agency, Wafa, The reality of education in the city of Jerusalem and the occupation, retrieved 5/2/2024
(3) The Palestinian curriculum, third basic grade, national and social upbringing, unit one, lesson three: The city of Jerusalem is the capital of my homeland, Palestine.
(4) Palestinian Curriculum, seventh grade, mathematics, unit one, lesson one
(5) The Palestinian Curriculum, eighth grade, social studies book, first semester, 2020 edition, activity No. 4, p. 9
(6) Mohammed S. Dajani Daou, Exploring the Palestinian Curriculum (Jerusalem, 2019), p. 12
(7) Anwar Qadah, 2023, The Open War Front on Education, Institute for Palestine Studies