Israel imposes curriculum on 45,000 Palestinian students

EAST JERUSALEM, Palestine (MNTV) — Israeli authorities have begun requiring about 45,000 Palestinian students in East Jerusalem to study the Israeli curriculum, in a move critics describe as another attempt to deepen control over Palestinian education and identity in the occupied city.

The policy takes effect with the beginning of the new school year and applies to Palestinian children entering first and seventh grades in 105 municipal schools administered by Israel. 

The affected students account for roughly 38 percent of the 120,000 pupils enrolled in schools across East Jerusalem.

The change marks the first time since Israel occupied East Jerusalem in 1967 that students in the affected municipal schools will be systematically required to follow the Israeli curriculum at these grade levels.

Critics say the Israeli government has spent years using financial incentives to pressure Palestinian schools into adopting its education system. 

According to Israeli newspaper Haaretz, Israeli authorities have since 2018 offered increased funding to schools in Palestinian areas that adopt the Israeli curriculum.

The policy has revived a long-running struggle over education in East Jerusalem, where the curriculum has become closely connected to the wider dispute over the city’s political status and Palestinian national identity.

For decades, schools in East Jerusalem used the Jordanian curriculum, reflecting Jordan’s administration of East Jerusalem and the West Bank between 1950 and 1967. 

Israel attempted to impose its own curriculum shortly after occupying the city, but the effort triggered protests and school strikes by Palestinian communities.

A Palestinian curriculum was subsequently introduced in East Jerusalem following the establishment of the Palestinian Authority in the 1990s.

The latest Israeli measure therefore represents more than a change in textbooks or classroom instruction. 

For Palestinian families and critics of Israeli policy, it is part of a broader effort to reshape the educational and cultural environment of an occupied city by placing Palestinian children increasingly under an Israeli state-controlled system.

The policy is not universal across East Jerusalem. Private schools using European or American curricula, along with recognized nonofficial schools, are exempt from the new requirement. 

Schools administered by the Palestinian Authority in the occupied West Bank will also continue using a curriculum approved by the Palestinian Ministry of Education.

The dispute over education comes against the backdrop of Israel’s broader policies in occupied East Jerusalem, where Palestinians have long faced restrictions and competing claims over the city’s political and national identity.

The Israeli occupation’s attempt to influence what Palestinian children learn has particularly sensitive implications because schools are among the principal institutions through which communities preserve language, history and collective identity.

By tying educational funding to adoption of its curriculum, critics argue that Israel is using material pressure to advance an assimilationist policy rather than allowing Palestinian communities to determine the education of their children.

The latest decision has consequently intensified concerns among Palestinians that education is being used as an instrument of political control, with the curriculum becoming another arena in the struggle over East Jerusalem.

For thousands of Palestinian children beginning the new academic year, the change means entering classrooms where an education system imposed by the occupying authority will increasingly shape what they study about their history, society and political surroundings.