RAMALLAH, August 2, 2018 (WAFA) – An East Jerusalem neighborhood is going to get its first elementary school after work on completion of a school run by the Islamic Waqf (endowment) department and funded by Japan is over, the Palestinian Economic Council for Development and Reconstruction (PECDAR) said in a statement on Thursday.

PECDAR deputy assistant for technical affairs, Raed Anabtawi, said Japan funded completion of the school located in Wadi al-Joz neighborhood in the heart of Jerusalem and furnishing it with around $800,000.

The importance of the school is that it is located in Israeli-occupied East Jerusalem and in a neighborhood that lacks an elementary school, which forced children to walk or travel long distance to reach their schools, said Samir Jibril, education ministry director in East Jerusalem.

He said the school, which will open with the new schoolyear, is going to have 150 children from grade one to four.

He said the school is going to solve some of the shortage in schools and classrooms in the occupied section of the city.

Palestinians in East Jerusalem prefer to send their children to private schools that teach the Palestinian curriculum instead of schools run by the Israeli municipality of West Jerusalem or the Israeli Ministry of Education that teach the Israeli curriculum or a distorted and altered version of the Palestinian curriculum.

M.K.