How Israel is tightening its grip on Palestinian schools in East Jerusalem
Israeli restrictions on teachers and pressure to adopt Israeli curriculum threaten Palestinian education in the city.
Jamal Shalabi is a 66-year-old chemistry teacher living in el-Bireh, in the occupied West Bank, but since 1998 he has taught in occupied East Jerusalem, making the commute through Israeli checkpoints every day.
The process was tiring, but it allowed him to work. But he now fears that soon won’t be the case, after he was informed by his school’s administration that he was one of 180 Palestinian teachers whose travel permits allowing them entry into East Jerusalem would be revoked upon their expiry at the end of the 2026-27 academic year.
The denial of entry permits to teachers is one of the most prominent restrictions imposed by Israel on schools in East Jerusalem, which, like the West Bank, is illegally occupied Palestinian territory, but which Israel considers part of a unified Jerusalem under its control.
The number of Palestinian students in East Jerusalem studying the Israeli curriculum was only in the hundreds 15 years ago. But by 2020, the figure had risen to more than 10,000.