Written by Yaqoub Abu Asab - a Jerusalemite researcher

The occupation authorities have been keen to control the education system in Jerusalem since the first day of the occupation of the city more than fifty years ago, as the education file is no less important and sensitive than the file of Islamic and Christian sanctities in the city of Jerusalem.
But the national stance of the Arab, Islamic and educational national leaders, including teachers, administrators and families of students in the city, and their refusal to deal with the occupation’s curricula and their insistence on teaching the Jordanian curriculum through the Islamic Endowments, had the greatest impact in repelling the Israeli attacks to Israelize education and worked to delay the implementation of the plan.
Jerusalem schools continued to fulfill their mission until the signing of the Oslo Accords, and responsibility for the education file was transferred to the Palestinian National Authority. The occupation continued its attempts to extend its control over the education file through numerous measures it took that targeted national educational institutions, closing them, and deliberately declaring them outside the law to empty the city of Jerusalem.
The occupation took advantage of the financial crises of some institutions, with the aim of imposing its agenda and conditions in exchange for financial facilities, and the file is still declining in a disturbing manner due to the unjustified and incomprehensible official neglect of the education file in Jerusalem.


Now the occupation has reached the point of using the most extreme types of arbitrary measures against schools in the city of Jerusalem, to the point of freezing and withdrawing the licenses of a number of the city’s schools under the pretext of teaching inflammatory curricula.
The goal of the occupation since its control of the city of Jerusalem is to fully control the educational curriculum in the city of Jerusalem, and the goal of these recent measures announced by the occupation government is the most dangerous to impose the occupation curriculum on Jerusalem schools and to amputate the educational system from its national roots and Palestinian Arab identity.
Perhaps these arbitrary measures against Jerusalem schools are the beginning of a dark era for the educational process in the Palestinian capital, as the production of generations cut off from their cause and roots is the primary danger to the Jerusalem issue that has been neglected for decades.


Are there serious steps taken by the Palestinian National Authority to defend the education file in Jerusalem?
• The Palestine Liberation Organization, its president, and its arms, especially the Palestinian National Authority, its head of government, the Ministry of Education, and the director of the Education Office in occupied Jerusalem, as an official representative of the ministry. They must officially issue a statement clarifying what level the Israelization of education has reached in Jerusalem, and what are the plans to confront it.
• In addition to the Islamic Endowments Department as an official body representing the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan, considering the education file as an extension of the custodianship of the blessed Al-Aqsa Mosque.
• Because there are explanations, the Palestinian factions, without exception, must denounce and issue a unified plan that rejects Palestinian division and unites for the young future who suffers in the city of Jerusalem from the absence of an educational role that emphasizes the right to education in Jerusalem based on the Palestinian curriculum.
• Going to international institutions such as UNESCO and raising the issue of education in Jerusalem in an urgent session to confirm the right of the next Jerusalemite generation to education according to the Palestinian curriculum.
• All Palestinian educational and national figures and educational and pedagogical institutions in Jerusalem and Palestine stand side by side with the city of Jerusalem to prevent any arbitrary decisions from the occupation to Israelize education.
Throughout history, Jerusalemites have proven that they can defend their rights, principles, and the future of their children, but Jerusalem needs a supportive official and international position to rally around it, a position that raises the banner of Jerusalem in teaching its children a national curriculum that expresses their identity and roots.
The collapse of the national educational system in Jerusalem is a dangerous indicator that warns of the spread of the occupation’s arbitrary measures targeting other, more sensitive and dangerous files. The message is directed to those responsible for the education file in Jerusalem, to realize the situation before it is too late and before Jerusalem loses the most important element in its cause, which is the issue of education. Jerusalem will not be left behind. The Covenant will rally around everyone who supports it locally, regionally, Arably and internationally before Jerusalem loses the future of its people and their right to a national curriculum that represents them and expresses their hopes and aspirations.
Indeed, in this is a reminder for whoever has a heart or listens and is a witness...