JERUSALEM, March 22, 2011 (WAFA) - Academic figures in Jerusalem confirmed on Tuesday the adherence to Palestinian curriculum in Jerusalem which they have been trying to maintain since the occupation in 1967.
Their statement came after the Israeli Ministry of Education decided to replace the Palestinian curriculum in the schools of Jerusalem with the Israeli curriculum.
The resolution was issued on March 7; which states that all schools must purchase the Israeli new supervised and improved curriculum for 2011-2012, thus canceling the Palestinian curriculum in East Jerusalem as a way of applying the Israeli law of school supervision issued in 1969. However the Islamic schools that are financed by al-Awqaf ministry are not included in the resolution.
They considered the Ministry’s decision a step towards Judaizing East Jerusalem, starting with the education sector.
The director of Education in Jerusalem, Samir Jibril, refused the Israeli resolution and asserted that “the curriculum is one the rights that the Israeli side is not entitled to interfere, considering this step as a prelude to impose the Israeli curriculum in East Jerusalem.
Jibiril demanded the schools’ administrations not to deal with the Israeli resolution and called the private schools to take a national decision by continuing to teach the Palestinian curriculum without any deletion or change in the content. He also said “The Palestinian curriculum is a one unit that has been prepared in an integrated manner and any deletion in any line can make it distorted”.
He explained that the Israeli municipality and ministry of education sell the books to its schools after deleting some parts of it and the Palestinian Authority’s logo thus selling it at high prices as well as preventing the schools from teaching certain books.
He said that the Israeli side tries in every time to intervene in any way to impose their curriculum and deprive the students from their right to express their identity, adding :“there is a decision of criminalizing who mentions the Nakba in 1948 or the setback in 1967.
Jerusalem schools are divided by the knowledge supervising authorities to 52 schools of the Israeli municipality of West Jerusalem, 55 private school, 37 schools which belong to al-Awqaf ministry and eight schools to the UNERWA (United Nations Relieve and Works Agency). Moreover, many educational institutions said that about 40 thousand students study in the schools of the Israeli municipality’s education department.
Y.Y./F.R.
