Palestinian Schools in East Jerusalem Strike Over Censored Textbooks
Palestinian schools in east Jerusalem are holding a strike to protest the censorship of Palestinian text books. Hundreds of schools remained shuttered on Monday in a strike called by the unified parents committee and the Palestinian National and Islamic Forces in Jerusalem. The strike also was in protest of attempts by the Jerusalem municipality to introduce an Israeli curriculum, Al Jazeera reported.
Most of the 280 Palestinian schools in east Jerusalem, with some 115,000 students from kindergarten to grade 12, were observing the strike, according to the report.
Israel’s Ministry of Education in July revoked the teaching licenses of six schools in east Jerusalem for a year due to incitement in Palestinian textbooks, which will be able to reopen if their curriculums are changed.
The parents committee says it will continue the strike and escalate it if the municipality does not stop interfering in students’ “right to learn their narrative and history as it is rather than distorted according to the narrative of the Israeli occupiers,” the official WAFA news agency reported.
