The parents of the students of al-Iman (Faith) School in the Jerusalem neighborhood of Beit Hanina today protested against the attempts to impose the distorted Israeli curricula.
Raed Bashir, a member of the Students’ Parents Committee, said that the inspection of the bags of the students by the staff of the Israeli Ministry of Education (MoE) was “illegal” and “inhumane”, pointing that the school would take legal proceedings against the Ministry’s measures.
He stressed that the students’ parents reject the use of repressive measures by Israeli MoE against the students and the school administration.
On Wednesday, Israeli MoE staff inspected the bags of the students of al-Iman School and al-Ibrahimia School in the neighborhood, looking for Palestinian curricula.
The administrations of both schools slammed the inspection as an integral part of the wider measures taken by MoE to impose the Israeli curriculum and falsify the historical narrative.
Meanwhile, Spokesperson for the Palestinian MoE Sadeq al-Khdour decried the inspection of the students’ bags and storming their school campus as a step in violation of all international laws and charters guaranteeing the right to education.
He added that the Palestinina MoE was preparing a file with regards to all Israeli violations against education institutions in the occupied territories to be submitted to relevant United Nations organizations as he called the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) to set up offices in locations where education are highly vulnerable to Israeli occupation violations.
At the end of July 2022, the Israeli Ministry of Education approved the revocation of permanent licenses for Palestinian schools in occupied Jerusalem because of what it purportedly described as “incitement against the state and the army in textbooks.”
Minister Yifat Shasha-Biton threatened to revoke the license of every educational institution that contains its curricula in incitement to “the State of Israel and its symbols.”
This came after a series of inspections of these schools carried out by the Control and Enforcement Department of the Israeli Ministry, which amounted to selecting books from students’ bags inside the classroom and summoning school principals to a listening committee.
The Ministry ended up revoking the permanent operating licenses of six schools and replacing it with a temporary one for a year, during which the school worked to remove some of the content as a condition for returning the license.
The schools affected are the Abrahamic College in the al-Sawana neighborhood, founded in 1931, and the Faith Schools, with its five branches throughout occupied al-Quds, founded in 1984.
Source: Palestinian News & Info Agency (WAFA)